Here There Be Dragons
by DreadNot
Summary: A phrase meant to denote uncharted territories. Collection of ficlets exploring any pairing, all characters, and myriad situations. This week, Poppy Hawke doesn't join the Qun, Alistair says goodbye, and Hawke mourns. Chapters 115-117.
1. You Will Never Be a Dragon

Years after Kirkwall, years of struggle and training later, Hawke mastered shapeshifting. At least, from the outside it appeared that he had mastered it. He could turn into a spider, a wolf, a bear, even a bereskarn or blight wolf, but it was never right. He was not truly a spider or a wolf, he was a man in spider chitin, wolf fur.

He was always still a man.

It frustrated him. No, that was too simple, it enraged him. He had been the Champion of Kirkwall. He had started the Circle Wars. He had survived demons, maleficarum, and dragons, but he had finally found the one battle he could not win.

He shifted through forms – the confused spider that could only manage to properly use four of its limbs, the wolf that relied more on its eyes than its nose and ears, the bear that tried to move like a man, and finally, his greatest failure…

… the power swirled, visible in the great cave's dim light, coalescing around the mage's body, shimmering and changing until the great terror sat in the cave, looking every inch the dragon.

Hawke looked out of the eyes the size of shields and dropped his head to the ground. He could look like a dragon, but his heart…

His heart would always be that of a man. It was his failing; it was his truest, deepest victory.


	2. Does It Get Crowded in There?

He had a habit, when he thought no one was paying attention, of talking to himself. Merrill idly kicked her feet where she lay sunning herself on a nearby boulder and eavesdropped on Anders while Hawke and Varric bickered over some detail of where to go next.

"No, no. Not like that, it doesn't work like that, people don't work like that."

"Something has to work, it cannot continue like this forever, it is unjust."

"The Maker left us to our own devices."

"So we must bring justice where He will not."

He startled guiltily when Merrill piped up to ask, "Do you have to close your eyes when you use the privy? Because he's looking too? What about when you and Hawke-?"

"Merrill!"

She glanced over her shoulder to see Hawke regarding her in exasperation.

"Oh! I'm sorry," she hurriedly said. "I didn't mean anything by it, but you have to admit it would be a bit much waking up in the middle of the night listening to him talk to himself in his sleep. Oh! I shouldn't have said that, but really, isn't it a bit crowded in there? It's crowded in my head all by myself."


	3. Kill it! Kill it with fire!

"Maker's breath!" Varric stumbled back with his breeches around his knees. Shouldn't it be a universal law of some sort that abominations weren't allowed to attack a man when he was clearing the mine shaft, so to speak?

"Don't you want to give us a kiss?" it asked from its twisted mouth.

Oh Void, a desire abomination?

_"Hawke!" _

The mage rounded the boulder Varric had gone behind for a bit of privacy while he answered his call of nature and gawped at the scene.

"Andraste's tits, kill it!" Varric shouted. "Kill it with fire!"

Hawke raised his staff and obliged.


	4. Anders' Dubious Fashion Choices

"Phblpt!" Hakwe snorted, nearly sneezed, and pulled away from one of Anders' patented hungry kisses to slap his feathered pauldron. "You don't love me, do you?"

Anders looked stricken. "Of course I love you. I would kill for you, die for you, change the world for you!"

Hawke rubbed her streaming eyes and finally sneezed. "Anders, if you loved me, you would ditch those Maker-forsaken feathers."

Anders absently petted his shoulder and shook his head. "But why? You know I could do something for the sneezing if you'd just let me."

Hawke bared her teeth in exasperation and plucked a feather from his shoulder. "I can do something for it if you'd just let me. Orlesian silk, Antivan leather, even Fereldan burlap, but noooo, you and your-" She sneezed again. "-feathers."


	5. Poison and Wine

Varric studied the Crow over the rim of a wine glass. They had done their little dance, swapping glasses, offering diversions, exchanging barbed banter, and now it was down to this – two men, two glasses; two men drink, one man leaves.

He picked up the wine glass and raised it in a toast before draining it in one long swallow. In the back of his head, he could hear Isabela offering a quip about how well he swallowed. He missed the Rivaini; without her, he had to make his own ribald comments.

The Antivan assassin leered and picked up his own glass, proving that the Crows knew a little something about swallowing too. More than a little something if some of Isabela's tales were to be believed.

He wiped the wine off his mouth and leaned across the table at Varric. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: 'Never get involved in a land war in Orlais.' But, only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against an Antivan when death is on the line!"

Varric cut his eyes to the right and Maraas took a step forward to pass Varric a potion vial.

"You fell victim to the classic blunder," Varric corrected as he flicked the cork off the vial. "Never get involved in a battle of wits and poison with a dwarf who has more wits, a stronger stomach…" he tossed back the contents of the vial and made a face, "… and the antidote."

He watched the surprise spread across the man's face just before he fell sideways off his stool.

The Qunari mercenary caught the coin Varric tossed him and picked up the body for proper disposal. Knowing Kirkwall, Varric thought he'd probably see the dead man shambling around again, but that was trouble for another night.


	6. And I, Love, Am a Pathological Liar

"Hawke took control, spinning Fenris until his back was against the wall, her body pinning him there…"

_She kissed me and I could taste ale and Antivan spices from the meal we'd shared…  
><em>  
>"He left her, saying it was too painful. She told me later that she understood his pain, but didn't want to push him…"<p>

_She held me after we found Bartrand, comforting me, murmuring reassurances, promising we would find him help…  
><em>  
>"At the end, he declared his undying love and made her swear not to die…"<p>

_We joked a little, but we both expected we were going to die. Shit happens right?  
><em>  
>"In the end, everyone left her. Except for Fenris…"<p>

_She's waiting for me, and I won't leave her disappointed._


	7. Red

"What is this?" Fenris eyed the strip of red cloth warily, as though it might spring to life and strangle him. One time too many around crazy blood mages? Probably.

"It's a token, just wear it." Hawke was rather proud of not sounding exasperated.

"Why would I wear it?" Hawke might not sound exasperated, but Fenris could almost sniff it from the air as though he were truly the wolf he was named for.

"To remember me, to remember us," Hawke replied, tying the favor around Fenris' bicep. "Even if you 'just can't.'"

Hawke might be used, but never forgotten.


	8. Varric's Print Shop

"Of all my ventures, this is the one I'm most proud of" Varric explained as he walked Hawke through the print shop.

Dwarves were hard at work carving the blocks for something and Hawke was drawn by her curiosity to peer at the backwards illustration.

"Varric!" she shouted, turning in time to see the dwarf sidling toward the door. He froze under her glare.

"Varric Tethras, is that a woodcut of me in a threesome with Isabela and Merrill on top of the Arishok's body? That's…"

"Titillating?" Varric suggested. "Exciting? Risque?"

"Disgusting," she said with a glare for her friend.


	9. Caught in the Act

"Shh, not there, there."

"But what if it doesn't fit there?"

"Then Kitten, you aren't wiggling it properly."

There was a long hush punctuated by giggles and a few piratically creative curses.

"Ah, there, that's it! Ah! Ohhhh…!"

_"Isabela!"_

Isabela and Merrill turned, both guiltily hiding their hands behind their backs.

Hawke put a hand on their shoulders and pushed to separate them like curtains.

"Merrill, I'm surprised at you." Hawke turned a sharp look on Isabela. "You I'm not surprised at at all."

They had managed to pick the lock on Hawke's desk and spread out the private etchings of Fenris.

Merrill blushed scarlet while Isabela leered and remarked, "I always wondered just how far those tattoos went."


	10. Guys, Guys, You've Got to Come See This!

"Is that…?" Aveline's brows knit into a disgusted scowl.

"I think it is," Hawke said eagerly. "I mean, look! When I mentioned it, I never really thought I'd see it. Quick! Grab Varric, he has to see this, even he couldn't come up with this."

Merrill peeked around the corner into the mausoleum and squeaked before pulling her head back and turning big eyes up at Hawke. "How do they even move like that?"

Aveline dragged Varric back and just pointed to the door where Hawke and Merrill were lurking.

He stuck his head around the corner and pulled back with a whistle. "Andraste's dimpled butt cheeks, am I really seeing boneless women flopping around an evil relic? Really? Even I couldn't write this shit."


	11. It's Only Fun If It's Illegal

The DuPuis household was safely asleep, dreaming Orlesian dreams of Orlesian luxuries abandoned in their exile to the Free Marches. The butler was, as always, asleep on his feet, thus no one heard the throaty chuckle and drunken snigger of a pirate lass leading her beau into the family treasure room.

"Step lightly, unless you want a blade up your arse," Isabela whispered to Fenris as she pushed the door closed. "There's a trap trigger right over there."

Fenris managed a whispered growl. "Why are we here? It's just like my mansion."

Isabela danced over to him and draped her arms over his shoulders. "Because, lover, after a while, it's only fun if it's illegal."


	12. In This Moment

There's a twist in his soul, a voiceless denial of distraction that somehow comes with a voice - Justice. Justice cannot understand that a man is more than a cause. Justice has always been nothing but the cause.

Hawke will never understand the effort it takes to love with Justice pounding the drums of war to drown the pounding of his heart. Hawke will never understand the price Justice exacted for his moments of happiness.

He – Justice or Anders or both, and it has always been both – lets the drums beat louder until they burst from the Chantry.

Price paid.


	13. Why Does No One Listen?

_What's the worst that could happen?_

If Varric weren't such a gentleman, he'd have slapped Hawke when she dropped that line. She knew that saying something like that was just begging the Maker to throw a big old smiting down on the speaker, but did she listen?

Halfway through Meredith kicking their asses halfway to the Black City, Varric looked over to Hawke as she threw her arms up to cast a spell that made the air crackle with power. He called out, "Hey Hawke, is this the worst yet?"

"NO!"

Why did the woman always have to be right?


	14. Resurrection

Long after the battle ended in the Gallows, Fenris returned to the scene of Meredith and Orsino's confrontation – the one that had ended in a beam of light that lit Kirkwall's sky like a beacon from the cruelest part of the Fade.

He had taken a seat on the stairs and pulled out a rag to buff the blood off his sword's blade and hilt, for all the world as though the first battle in a war that would convulse the continent had not just been fought with him as a key player.

He hummed something under his breath, wiping the sword until it gleamed before taking out a whetstone and oil to freshen up the edge on his blade. He was still blood-spattered, his white hair matted with blood that had gone to maroon as it dried, the red favor on his wrist almost blackened with the blood of demons and abominations, mages and templars.

He finished sharpening his blade and simply set it across his knees, waiting.

The evening moved on, scented by smoke, blood, and raw magic, the wind carrying occasional sounds of people struggling to restore any sense or order to a world that had exploded in chaos.

Still Fenris waited.

Fog rolled in for an hour after full dark, muffling the sound as though the city and Gallows had been swaddled in cotton. Fires burned on, men and women still screamed or cried or shouted to one another, but it was all veiled in the mercy of fog.

The fog rescinded its grace after the air grew cool enough not to draw it off the water and the stars peeked down at Fenris through the last billows of smoke.

He remained unmoving, waiting for something only he anticipated.

The moon rose, limning the island in silver where it was not lit by fire, turning the lyrium traceries on the elf's skin into echoes of its touch, like moonsilver running in rivulets along cuts in his muscles.

Finally he rose to his feet, his sword held lightly in his hands and watched a shadow move on the ground nearby. It rose to its feet unsteadily, drawn like a marionette on its strings, a head turning to survey its surroundings before fixing its gaze on Fenris, eyes already lighting with a blue fire.

"Hawke sent me," Fenris told Justice and swept forward in a blaze of lyrium and steel.


	15. Scary Stories You Tell in the Dark

Marian and Bethany huddled together under their blanket tent, giggling together as two sisters with a spectacularly surly brother are wont to do.

"Father says that the templars are twenty feet tall," Bethany confided.

"Nuh uh," Marian scoffed. "I've seen them outside the chantry. They look like regular people. But grouchier."

Bethany gasped in the darkness. "Weren't you scared?"

"Nope," Marian lied.

"I'd be scared," Bethany admitted. "I don't want to be made Tranquil."

"You don't even know what Tranquil means," Marian said and poked her in the ribs.

"I do too," Bethany poked her sister back. "It means they make you a ghost and you don't love anyone or anything. Not even pudding!"

They were both silent, considering the horror of not loving dessert.


	16. I'd Rather Forget

Marian leaned on the ship's railing and watched Kirkwall fall into the distance behind her.

She could see the smoke still rising from the ruins of the Chantry and from the fighting in the streets and the Gallows.

She had fought so hard to make a home and now she was on the road again, fleeing Kirkwall and all the nightmares it had brought her. What had she really won in Kirkwall? A home? In flames. Safety for her family? All lost. Freedom for herself? Tenuous at best. Love?

Her hand trembled with the memory of what love had brought her. A dagger thrust.

Isabela came to lean next to her, putting a hand over hers to still its tremble.

Marian stretched her lips in an approximation of a smile. "Do you ever think that it would be better to be able to take a potion and forget everything?" she asked, looking down at the water swirling out in the ship's wake.

Isabela squeezed her hand. "Do you think that helped Fenris?"

"No, but…."

"But you're different, right?"

Hawke nodded. "It's…."

"Worse?"

She nodded again.

Isabela kissed her cheek and stood up. "No. Because then I'd have to forget you."


	17. Uncharted

Isabela can navigate her way from the Waking Sea to the Colean Sea with her eyes closed. She can brazen her way through the strait between Rivain and Llomerynn without breaking a sweat. She can make port in Antiva City and only pay the actual port charges and not the ones extorted by ambitious entrepreneurs.

She watched Hawke toss back another glass of the Hanged Man's swill and lean in to tell Varric a joke that made the dwarf nearly tip his chair over backwards when he guffawed.

She could navigate the world, but love? Love was uncharted territory.


	18. Can we fix it? No, it's fucked

They stood around the pile of tinder that had once been a chest. Hawke still held his sword in his hand glowering down on the flinders with an expression that said, _And stay dead! _

"I told you we didn't need Isabela," he told Fenris, Anders, and Aveline. With an unspoken subtitling of, _Run off with the book and leave me to face the Arishok alone? To the Void with you and your bosom! _

Anders knelt and sifted through the remains, finally holding up two twisted pieces of metal that had probably been the key to the lost temple's inner sanctum that they were looking for.

Hawke looked at it. "Can we fix it?"

Anders raised an eyebrow.

"Fine," the warrior huffed. "We'll go back and get Varric."

So much for their first post-Arishok outing without their best picklock.


	19. The Scars of Your Love

Isabela helped her peel her armor away. For once the pirate was quiet, careful, her dexterity exactly what was needed to pull the dented metal out of wounded flesh. Meredith's sword blows had driven the armor into Hawke's skin, leaving it to scrape and tear with her every movement.

The wages of war, the rogue thought to herself, though that didn't keep her from hissing when Isabela pulled a splinter of metal out of her shoulder.

"I'll stitch those for you," Isabela offered, looking at the wounds that healing potions had mostly closed, but not quite erased.

There were other marks, other wounds. Old scars, new scars. Reminders that being Champion did not come without a price paid in blood. She traced the eight red scoremarks that ran down Hawke's back. They wouldn't need tending, the healing potions had closed whatever wounds there had been.

"These won't even scar," she assured Hawke.

Hawke twisted to look over her shoulder and drew in a breath when she saw the marks Isabela indicated. Her legs seemed to crumple under her, sending her falling back onto her bed with a sob.

"What?" Isabela was at her side in an instant, wrapping her in the protection of her arms.

Hawke turned her face away, looking at the bed where she and Anders had spent so many nights. Isabela followed her gaze to the rumpled sheets and hissed softly through her teeth.

Eight lines of dried blood marked the sheets and Isabela cursed herself for not seeing the marks for what they were; she'd left enough of them on men and women's and backs over the years.

Hawke scrubbed her tears away with the heel of her hand and gently pushed Isabela away.

"I wish they would. I wish they _would_ scar."


	20. Masquerade

"You lie!"

Anders lounged back looking indecently pleased with himself. "No, human semen. It's the only antidote. I tried to tell you not to eat that mushroom, but would you listen?"

"We are trapped miles below the surface with no idea how long it will take Hawke to get back with the supplies to rescue us and you tell me not to eat the only food we find. Why would I have listened to you?"

Anders shrugged and pointed a thumb at his chest. "Me Gray Warden, you surface elf. Was that put simply enough for you? Now, antidote or death?"

Fenris' indecision was clear in the cool glow from Anders' staff. He rubbed his stomach where the cramps gripped him and growled. "Pull yourself off and I'll… just get it."

Anders shook his head. "No. It loses its efficacy almost immediately. You have to take it straight from the source."

...

Varric was the first of the rescue crew to arrive. The dwarf was just better suited for navigating the tunnels in the Deep Roads than his other companions, even if he was a surfacer himself.

He paled in the dim torchlight when he saw Fenris' lifeless body. "What happened to him?"

Anders shrugged. "Suicide."

The mage held out a mushroom. "Hungry?"


	21. Absolution

Gluttony.

Food is food, delicious, but not to the point of sin.

Sloth.

Once perhaps, but no longer. He would rather be a man of action.

Greed.

For experience, perhaps, but not for worldly goods. Another he can mark off.

Rage.

For his parents, for his country, for all he lost and can never regain? Yes, there is rage.

Pride.

A prince without pride? If one existed, it was not he.

Envy.

He does not want to admit to envy, but when he sees her with her head close to the elf's, a smile curving her lips… yes, he will confess it.

Lust.

Every waking moment, following her, watching the sway of her hips, smelling her sweat, hearing her voice, burning with the tantalizing touch of her hand when she bandages his wounds.

There are sins he can confess, but can he be absolved when the sin never ends?


	22. Eggs

"I just realized," Anders grunted and swept the bladed end of his staff up into a spider's mandibles, knocking it back before it could finish its goal of eating his face, "that I hate every single thing that lays eggs."

Isabela laughed as she pulled her daggers out of another's abdomen, sending… was that green? ichor spraying. "What? These aren't better than kittens?"

"No," he snapped, bringing up a hand to freeze the blasted thing when it made another try. What was it about his face? He'd checked the mirror, it wasn't that pretty.

Varric brought up Bianca to rain a shower of arrows down on the fray before adding his two coppers. "He might have a point. Dragons."

Anders bared his teeth in a humorless grin. "Why do they have to lay so bloody many eggs? Every time we try to get up Sundermount, there are always more of those dragonlings."

"Chickens," Hawke shouted, battering a spider with his shield before ramming his sword through the top of its… well, head would have to do. "You can't hate chickens."

"You have obviously never met a chicken," Anders yelled back. "Filthy, bad-tempered, creatures prone to pecking and shitting on poor lads who just want to pet the fluffy things."

Varric and Hawke shared a look.

"Childhood trauma," Varric observed.

"Explains a lot," Hawke agreed. "Now watch your back!"

Right. Back to the spiders.


	23. Sandal at night

The guardsmen eyed the pile of bodies on the stairs leading out of Lowtown down into Darktown.

"Taking bets," Willum said dryly.

"Hawke for ten," said Corin, shaking a handful of coppers before putting them in Willum's hand to hold.

"Hawke," James agreed, adding ten of his own.

"Carta." Lorne added coins to the pot.

Lyrine cleared her throat and dropped a handful of coppers. "Sandal."

"Who?" The other guards turned to frown at her.

"Sandal," she repeated, folding her arms across her chest. "You'll be handing those coppers over to me, count on it."

"What makes you say that?" Willum asked.

Lyrine pushed one of the bodies with a toe, sending the petrified corpse rolling down the steps until it shattered into pieces at the bottom. "Enchantment."


	24. Kill them all

Ah, his little wolf, not a cub any longer, but grown to his full potential.

But still not an alpha male, Danarius observes, seeing the way Fenris still defers to another. He sees the way his little runaway walks a step behind and to the right, guarding the mage's back the way once Fenris guarded his back.

He wonders, idly, if Fenris would turn on the Champion in time, disloyal creature that he is.

He wonders, less idly, if this Champion makes Fenris' tattoos _burn_ under his hand the way Danarius used to.

It is that not-so-idle thought that seals his decision.

"Kill them," he instructs his guards when the time comes. "Kill them all."


	25. Butterflies

The butterfly fluttered across the open field, drifting from flower to flower, sometimes alighting, sometimes barely grazing the petals before moving on, blown by whim or wind, but it carried its now with it wherever it landed.

Malcolm let the butterfly hold his attention only until it came between him and another form that drifted across the sunlit field, arms shifting through the forms of strike and parry, leap and evade.

She almost seemed to float, the two training daggers he had carved for her held in her hands as she fought invisible templars for her sister, for her father. The tall grass barely stirred in her passage, blown by whim or wind, but, Malcolm thought, his daughter always carried her now with her wherever she landed.


	26. Oh, it's big

The campfire had burned down to embers, the chatter and banter among the four friends had died down to occasional whispers, _Do you have my blanket?_ or _Maker, these stitches itch._ and _Dammit, Isabela, I already said no!_

Garrett lay on his back with his head pillowed on his hands. "Do you ever wonder if this is all worth it?"

It was one of those things that crosses a person's mind on the threshhold into the Fade, and he hadn't meant to say it aloud, but once spoken, it was too late to take it back.

The night seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the answer.

"Yes." This from the unlikeliest of sources, considering the mage's zeal for his cause, but it was Anders who answered first. "But what are the alternatives?"

"Running away," Isabela said. "Running away is always an option."

"Like you did, leaving Hawke to clean up your mess?" Anders retorted, sitting up in his bedroll. "That's not an option."

"Whoa, hold on there," Garrett interrupted. "Lie back down, magey. It's too late for fighting."

Anders subsided and lay down again, but not without a hot glower in the pirate's direction.

"What about you, Hawke," Aveline asked to quell the argument between Anders and Isabela. "Since you brought it up."

"You first," Garret said. "Does the human battering ram ever wonder if this is worth it? All the fighting and the blood." All the loss?

Aveline didn't hesitate for a moment. "No. I can't." What went unsaid was that she had to have her certainties or she would surely flounder.

"Your turn now, Hawke." Isabela said. "What about your doubt?"

Garrett's mind swam with memories of his mother's face, Anders' admission that no there was no potion that would free him of Justice, his sister looking at him through a barred Gallows window, the deaths, the losses, the endless procession of people he had slain despite the fact that they had mothers and sisters and brothers of their own.

He sighed and closed his eyes. "My doubt?

"Oh, it's big."


	27. Vengeance

**Isabela**  
>"Ah, my dear Isabela, the job is done."<p>

Isabela brushes her hair out of her eyes and favors him with a burning smile. If there is one thing her husband – late husband – has taught her, it is that her womanly charms have worth in men's eyes. Admittedly, he had done it through raging jealousy and his fists, but the lessons have stuck.

She stalks toward Zevran, already stripping off her belt and her thin shift, dropping most of her knives as she goes, ready to offer him the first part of his payment for a job well done.

She doesn't care what the enlightened says, vengeance is sweet, and freedom still sweeter.

**Aveline**  
>When she was a little girl, her father taught her the things he thought a little chevalier should know – pride, duty, endurance.<p>

He tried to teach her never to let a slight pass unanswered, but she heard another voice in her heart that she always hoped was her mother's. Her mother's voice counseled that not all strength came from the fist.

In Kirkwall she tries to hear her mother's voice as often as her father's and her guards – her _family_ – prosper for it.

There are Orlesians who say that living well is the best revenge. Aveline believes that living _good_ is better.

**Carver**  
>Some nights he dreams that he died instead of his sister. That in some other world, some other life, the balance of existence dictates that Bethany lives and Carver dies.<p>

Most nights he dreams of darkspawn and wakes with a scream caught in his throat. It's the price of being a Gray Warden, and he pays it willingly.

He pays it because every time he ventures into the Deep Roads with his fellow wardens, every time his sword cleaves through twisted flesh and bone, he is paying them back for everything he lost, everyone he lost. He does it for Bethany.

**Varric**  
>For long years he has engaged his imagination in fantasies of revenge for his brother's betrayal. The fantasies grow more elaborate time, lovingly embellished with screams and pleas for mercy, gilded with admissions of guilt and heartfelt apologies.<p>

Late at night when the Hanged Man is silent save for the surprised shout of a drunkard waking from his stupor with his face in a puddle of… something, he tells Bianca bedtime tales of heroic fratricide.

Seeing Bartrand weeping, lost to the curse of the very idol he had tried to kill his brother for, Varric loses his taste for vengeance.

**Fenris**  
>With Hadriana dead at his feet, he had thought that all he would need to be a free man was Danarius' death, that it would stop the burning that is his first memory.<p>

With Danarius crushed and broken, his rage turns on his sister, the flames licking higher in desperation to keep from being extinguished. What would he be without the fire?

With her heart in his hands, he begins to understand how men open themselves to demons, and why those of rage are things of molten hatred.

Vengeance has not cooled the blaze, only brought him to the brink of self-immolation.

**Merrill**  
>She thinks, sometimes, that other clans will hear of her and what has happened. When she sees a face marked by vallaslin in the alienage her heart always stutters a little and she wonders if she will be brave enough to take the justice that by rights, other Dalish could mete out.<p>

In her wretched little home, she stands in front of the eluvian, seeing exactly the reflection of her soul she would expect – nothing – and one night her broken heart hardens.

She returns to her studies and her goal of repairing the cursed thing, no longer to retrieve lost knowledge, but to find the evil through the looking glass, and have _vengeance._

Then she will face the other clans and allow them their _justice. _

**Justice**  
>Justice does his best to find justice for Kristoff's wife, Aura. He finds the memories of the man's love compelling, even envies them. He does his best, and in the nights while his companions sleep, he turns the man's memories over and over like treasures to rival the lyrium ring his friend had given him.<p>

Love, he finds, is a treasure beyond compare, and one he knows he could never experience for himself.

When does he know that he has lost himself? When does he find himself twisted out of true?

When he whispers jealously, _No, Hawke is a distraction._

What need has Vengeance of love when they have retribution?

**Sebastian**  
>His cry cuts through Hawke's misguided attempt at granting mercy to a murderer.<p>

The man brought him justice for the murders of his family, he is certain he can make him see reason, even with his lover.

Elthina is his family. _Was_his family.

He makes his case, makes his threat, and hates himself for it, and sees Hawke hate him for it as well, but the choice is made.

When the knife finds its home, for just a moment he feels a pang, and hears the distant echo of a demon's laugh.

Has he seen justice? Or just vengeance?

**Hawke and Anders**  
>Vengeance.<p>

She turns the word over and over in her mind until it loses all meaning, becoming only ugly syllables, not a name, not a concept, not an act perpetrated when justice forgot compassion.

She smiles and nods when spoken to, takes food and drink when her friends press them upon her, even sleeps when she grows tired, but always her thoughts turn inward.

She knows the lure of vengeance, ugly though it is. She knows the rage and the anger and the… the helplessness against horror that push for action despite consequences.

But when she looks over at Anders, slumped against the center mast of the ship, forced to live to make some reparation despite his wish to die, she thinks that justice could be far crueler in the long run.


	28. Wade and Herren's Fabulous Adventure

_"Herren!" _

Herren winced at Wade's shriek of fury, he must have seen the shipment of leather that had just come in. He had known he shouldn't have accepted it, but it would be tolerable quality for equipping new recruits at least.

"Herren," Wade stalked in holding a piece of leather in his fist, his face already red with fury. "Have you _seen_this travesty? Have you seen it?"

"Yes, Wade, I've seen it," Herren said with a long-suffering sigh.

"Then how, how, _how could you?" _

Herren rubbed his temples before deciding that yes, today would be a good day to bring out his secret weapon.

He reached under the counter and drew out a small stack of drake's scales and watched the rage melt off Wade's face between one breath and the next.

"Oh _Herren,"_he breathed, all thoughts of substandard leather forgotten. "You are too good to me."

Herren waited until Wade's back was turned to smile fondly at the man.

"I know."


	29. Just One More

Isabela hunched at Varric's great table, lips stained with ink from her habit of licking her quill between sentences.

"Rivaini," Varric said wearily. "It's late."

"I know, I know," she muttered distractedly. "Just a little more. I've almost got Hawke to the point where she throws Fenris in the bed on top of Anders and makes them both—"

_"Isabela!" _

She looked up from the page and stuck out her tongue. "Don't give me that, Varric. You know how it is when you're on a roll. Just one more chapter. I promise."

Varric groaned and fell back on his bed. Void take Isabela and her friend fiction.


	30. Fine Antivan Leather

"Ugh, Maker what is that smell?" Marian choked out, nose wrinkled against the stink.

Zevran quirked an eyebrow at her and grinned, drawing off his gloves one slow fingertip at a time while Isabela lounged back on the bed and chuckled.

"You just had to get him going, didn't you?"

"That was rather the idea, wasn't it?" Marian joked back, a hand on her friend's thigh, though her face was still scrunched up against the smell.

"That, my dear Champion," Zevran purred, tossing the glove in her lap, "is the fragrant aroma of my childhood, only the finest Antivan leather."


	31. Once I Had a Dream

_Once I had a dream…_

She finds it written on a scrap of paper in his mansion, amid the wreckage and clutter that he never bothered to clear, and she has never touched herself out of respect for his choices as a free man (though her hands _itch_for a broom almost every time she visits.)

She turns the words over in her mind, worrying at them, teasing them, thinking of what he told her on their single night together, _I began to remember…_

She holds the scrap with its fragment of his careful handwriting, and wonders if he has also begun to dream.


	32. Ribbons

She wears ribbons in her hair so Daddy will smile.

He always looks so sad when Mommy is away, but when she wears the red ribbons he always picks her up and swings her around, calling her his little eyass.

For a long time, she thought Eyass was her name, but Daddy taught her that it is the name for a baby hawk, just as she is a baby Hawke in her own right.

She wears the ribbons in her hair and Daddy swings her up toward the sky to fly like a little eyass, but he smiles even more when she asks him what he calls a baby wolf.


	33. Goats

"You probably don't have to do this, you know," Marian said, dubiously eying the goat. The goat eyed her back with her vertically-slit pupils, chewing on Maker-knew-what with a kind of infinite patience.

Aveline shook her head. "I'm a traditional sort of woman, Hawke. I started this relationship. _I_proposed. And I make more money than he does."

"But it's so…" she trailed off under Aveline's scowl.

"So what?" the guardwoman asked, hefting the wheat she had under her arm and tugging the goat's lead. "It's so _what,_Hawke?"

"So sweet," Marian said lamely, and followed Aveline up the stairs to the Hendyr family home.


	34. Your Best Wasn't Good Enough

_I did my best._

Did you?

_I helped my family escape Lothering. _

Bethany died.

_I helped buy my mother's way into Kirkwall. _

How many people did you kill for the Red Irons?

_I helped Fenris free himself. _

He killed his own sister.

_I helped Varric find Bartrand and he didn't kill him. _

A broken husk. Couldn't you have done better in the Deep Roads?

_I tried to be a good sister. _

He rejected you to become a templar. His sister the mage.

_I stopped the Qunari rampage in Kirkwall. _

Which happened because you trusted a thief.

_Mother… _

You failed her.

_Anders… _

A murderer you lay beside every night.

_Merrill, I helped Merrill. _

An entire clan of Dalish, lost to history and to their race.

_I helped the mages. _

The ones led by Orsino? Orsino who knew your mother's murderer and hid his acts?

_I stopped Meredith. _

She was a good woman before you failed everyone in the Deep Roads. Her fall is your fault. It's all your fault.

_What would you have done differently? _

I would have taken the power when it was offered to me. The power I can offer you now.

_Thanks, but I'll just do better on my own. I think I'll wake up now. You should run._


	35. Will o'wisp

Deep in the marshes of the Korcari wilds, will o'wisps are said to lead unwary travelers to their deaths with promises of lantern light and safety on dark nights.

He stands behind Anders, wanting to card his fingers through his lover's hair one last time, but holding himself back for fear he will lose all resolve and finally let loose the tears he has been hoarding for years, since even before Ostagar, since his father's senseless death.

He holds the knife, and Anders' lies have already led him away from the beaten path into a mire he can never escape.


	36. Weapon of Choice

Hawke waited with Aveline and Anders while Isabela scouted ahead. Someday they would get the Docks cleared of thugs and gangs and safe to walk at night, but that time had yet to come.

After having had her face pounded into a wall the night before, Hawke was ready to try some more unusual tactics.

She was just about to peek around the corner to see if something had gone awry when Isabela tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and rounded on the other rogue, hissing, "I told you not to do that!"

Isabela sniggered unapologetically. "Just keeping you on your toes," she whispered. "And so far you suck at it."

Hawke resisted the urge to deck her. "Well? What did you see?"

"Slavers. A good half dozen, with more thinking they're being sneaky up on the rooftop."

"Do you think the plan will work?" Hawke asked.

"Oh, yes," Isabela said with a wicked smirk. "Definitely. If there's one thing slavers have a good eye for, it's flesh."

All three women turned their attention to Anders, who shifted uncomfortably and adjusted the strap down the center of his chest that was almost the only thing covering his upper body from nipples to neck.

"Ladies, please. I haven't done anything like this since Justice," he protested weakly.

Hawke nodded to Aveline, who propelled him forward with a strong hand in the middle of his back.

"Go, go!" Hawke urged, grinning like a maniac. "And remember what we said about the shimmy - make it spicy!"


	37. Awkward

"Barkspawn, no!" Marian wanted to sink into the floor.

"Gaspode, down!" Daniella snapped.

Both mabari ignored their masters, going about making each other's acquaintance in a rather... unexpected manner.

Finally Marian grabbed Daniella by the arm and pulled her out of the garden and into the mansion. "I'm so sorry," she stammered to her cousin, the Hero of Ferelden. "I didn't know he swung that way."

Daniella laughed and shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I didn't know Gaspode did either."


	38. You have been weighed

The Arishok challenged Hawke to a duel. Over her.

"Wait one minute." Isabela stepped up. Who was the duelist here after all? Her? Or the spindly mage?

And no she was not going to think about the fact that Hawke was anything but spindly because she really wanted to do things to him that would make him forget all about the little thing he had going with Merrill, no matter how sweet the girl was.

Wait. Where was she? Right. Priorities.

"If you're going to duel anyone," she challenged, "duel me."

The Arishok merely shook his ponderous head. "You are not basilit-an."

And what the buggery was that anyway?

He dismissed her, simple as that, and he saw in his eyes something that made her burn with humiliation: _You have been weighed. You have been measured. And you have been found wanting._


	39. One O'Clock and All's Well

"I think we're going to get home without getting jumped."

Varric groaned. "Why did you have to say that, Chantry Boy? Do you know what happens when people say that?"

Merrill pitched her voice down for her imitation of Varric, "No shit, there I was, and two dozen slavers just fell from the sky."

Hawke snorted a laugh through her nose, trying to stay quiet, because she really would prefer they made it to the Hanged Man without yet another kill or be killed situation.

"I was just saying," Sebastian insisted, "that it's a quiet night and no one seems—"

He was interrupted by the quiet thumps of dozens of feet in soft footpad's boots hitting the ground.

"What did I tell you?" Varric said, pulling Bianca off his shoulder. "Never say that."

In the distance, they heard the melancholy – and utterly incorrect – call of a guardsman: "One o'clock, and all's well!"


	40. Words on a Page

Fenris knows what the shapes are. He understands the concept that one draws shapes that represents sounds and the sounds taken together will have meaning. Each squiggle on this page is a sound, captured, ready to be released by the passing eye of one trained in its secrets.

He turns that thought over in his head – the words are imprisoned, but they can be freed, yet even when they are freed, they remain imprisoned. Somehow, he thinks there is a secret about himself in there, if only he can unravel it.

He is imprisoned, but when she looks at him, knowing his secrets, she releases him.

But still he remains trapped, like a word on a page.


	41. The Scream

The scream is trapped behind his smile. He keeps it locked there when Macha throws herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He bites his lips until they bleed while Hawke and Cullen discuss what will be done with him, but the scream stays where it belongs.

He swallows it, letting it swell his throat until his throat burns with the effort of keeping it in. He feels it settle lower, behind his sternum like something possessing him.

And it is that thought that breaks his smile.

He excuses himself almost at a run, he clatters down the stairs in the Gallows, crashing through doors, going deeper, deeper, until he reaches the entrance to the tunnels that no one is supposed to know about. Where no one is supposed to know the smugglers bring more lyrium for addicted men and women than the Chantry would allow.

Where no one but a few dwarves will hear him when the scream finally erupts from his throat like lava thrown from a volcano, torrents of sound scalding away the fear and anger and pain that he had hidden because he had responsibilities, he had a family, he could – not – break.

The scream burns away some of what he has hidden, but the memories will be with him always. Keran realizes then that it will never end, he will fight the demons of memory for the rest of his life.


	42. It's more of an involuntary vow

"When was the last time you had new clothes?"

Anders looked down at what he was wearing, brushed a bit of dust off of his pauldrons, and tried not to think about the real answer to Isabela's question. "You don't like the apostate-on-the-run look? I think it's quite dashing."

Isabela stood, hands on hips, booted foot tapping impatiently on the floor, and shook her head. "You used to take care of yourself, Anders." She reached out and flicked his bare earlobe. "Did you sell all your good clothes, your earring, even your old staff?"

"Well, yes," he said, suddenly feeling defensive. He pointedly eyed her extravagant jewelry. "I thought I had better use for the money than clothes and jewelry."

"So what? You took a vow of poverty? Gave everything to the poor? In case you haven't noticed, most of the poor have more than you do now."

Anders surveyed his small domain, the clinic with its meager beds and dirt and mold that collected on the walls and in the corners despite his best efforts to keep the place clean. "I suppose you could say it was a vow of poverty." An unexpected side-effect of Justice was more like it. "An involuntary one."

She tossed a small bag his way before she turned to leave. He caught it and heard coins clink.

"For the healing." She put an extra sway in her step just for him, he knew it. "And for keeping your mouth shut about what you healed," she added.


	43. If You Don't Go to the Parties

To be honest, he had never thought this day would come.

He had thought to die on a templar sword, with Sebastian's arrow through his heart, or even with Hawke's blade in his back.

He had not thought to live so long that his Calling would be upon him. He had thought that he could leave everything behind save the nightmares.

And the stamina, but he got to use that so infrequently it didn't bear dwelling upon.

Yet there he was, staring at the black hole in the side of a mountain with nothing but the staff on his back and the spells in his soul.

So, this answered his question – if you don't go to the parties, are you still a Gray Warden?

The answer was that the Gray Wardens always had one last big, bloody, scary as fuck going away party waiting.


	44. A Different Kind of Magic

On the long trip to Amaranthine she had wondered if it would be worth it. Ferelden was safer than the Free Marches, but not by much. Not when traveling with the most wanted man in Thedas, but still she had dragged him onto the ship and nursed him through the voyage.

It had been hard, getting him to eat, getting him to even acknowledge her. The fire in his eyes seemed to have burned itself out along with the embers of Kirkwall's chantry, but still she cared for Anders, keeping him alive, talking to him, telling him stories that had nothing to do with mages and templars, blood or war.

She held out hope that he would learn to live again, and that she would learn to trust him again.

Now she draws the hood up over his head when they disembark in Amaranthine. He lets her lead him out into the city that is still rebuilding after the darkspawn siege of years before.

She has a name, one he mentioned once in passing and likely never imagined she would remember. She leaves him to wait while she asks directions of guardsmen, keeping her voice down so he does not hear, and when she has her directions, she takes his arm again and draws him deeper into the city until she can knock on a door, wait for an answer.

The woman who answers the door is suspicious until she sees his face, then her expression warms and she lets Hawke bring Anders inside, settle him in a chair, and wait…

Hawke watches him closely when Delilah Howe returns with a tabby cat in her arms, and she nearly weeps to see Anders' expression flicker into life, his eyes growing wide and shiny when the cat leaps from Delilah's arms into his lap.

When he smiles, Hawke does cry.

It's magic. Just a different kind.


	45. There is a Hole in Your Soul

Orsino knew her stories. Once, years before, Meredith had told him about her sister, and how she had become an abomination, slaying more than seventy people before she was stopped.

He respected Meredith, he held her in esteem, but he could not help but hate her.

She loathed everything he was. How could he make her see that he was just a man, like any other. A man who could make choices. Were choices not the Maker's gift and curse to his creation?

He might have loved her for her strength, once upon a time.

But that was long before the hole opened in her soul and she filled it only with rage.


	46. Not This Again

"Is that… a varterral? Another one?" Hawke was understandably incredulous. "I'm sure I killed it."

Merrill tried to explain, but he didn't seem to hear her, given his complaints that continued even as he scythed his sword into the creature's legs, even while he was spitting caustic spittle out of his mouth, he still gave vent to his outrage.

"I know I killed this!

"It's not allowed to come back once I've killed it!

"Void take it, just die already!"

Given his outrage, Merrill decided to wait until later to mention that it would be back if they ever returned.


	47. Varric, Isabela  winter

"Rivaini, you're doing it again."

"Doing what again?" Isabela asked, her voice dripping faux innocence.

"You're objectifying me again," Varric said with an admirable straight face. No wonder he was the diamondback champion of their small circle of friends.

"No I'm not!" Isabela protested.

"Yes you are," he countered smugly. "I can see you looking at my chest hair."

"I'm not!" And this time her protest was hoenst. "How can I? It's winter and it's all covered up."

Varric gave her an expansive shrug. "I can tell when a woman is undressing me with her eyes. You're doing such a good job of it, I can't decide whether to get hot or catch a chill."

"Get hot," Isabela said, nodding. "Definitely get hot."


	48. I Told You Not to Touch That!

The ceiling was coming down – not falling down, sliding on tracks. Oh yes, and there were spikes. Spikes!

He was going to become an impaled Hawke pancake – or one of those Orlesian things, an impaled Hawke crepe. He shot a hot glare at Merrill, who stood by the wall, looking guilty.

"I thought I told you not to touch anything!"

She shook her head. "I didn't!"

Like Flame she didn't, but he didn't have time to argue that with the ceiling coming down on them. He pressed his face to the small opening out to the corridor and shouted for Isabela.


	49. Sleeping with the Fishies

Varric was a city dwarf and he liked it that way, but even he had to admit that this little forest clearing was idyllic. If Hawke would only drag them to peaceful places like this a little more often…

…then he would have much less fodder for his stories, but also probably fewer scars. He supposed he would take the scars as fair trade for the tales.

He rubbed a small block of wax over Bianca's stock while he watched over his friends. It was midday, but they were all exhausted after finally fighting their way out of that cave Isabela had promised would be filled to the ceiling with treasure.

Spiders was more like it.

She lay sprawled on a blanket, her kerchief pulled down to shade her eyes looking completely carefree in her doze. Only Varric noticed the knife hidden in the grass under her hand.

Hawke had dipped a rag in the pond at the edge of the clearing and draped it over her forehead before she fell asleep using Isabela's thigh as a pillow.

Briefly Varric wished he was as accomplished an artist as he was a storyteller. If he could sell the image of the two women asleep like that, he would be rich beyond even the golden dreams of dwarves.

And Daisy… his eyes swept the clearing and found her lying on her stomach by the pond. She had squealed with delight when they had found the pond and seen the tiny minnows darting under its surface.

He set Bianca aside to stroll over to squat at Merrill's side. "Did you find anything good in there?"

Her fingertips trailed in the water, the minnows curiously nibbling and bumping at the intrusions into their little world.

"Daisy?"

Bending down, he saw that her eyes were closed, her face slack in sleep.

He chuckled softly to himself and lifted her hand out of the water to settle it on the grass.

"Only you, Daisy, would find a way to sleep with the fishes that was actually adorable," he murmured before going back to reassure Bianca that he was not neglecting her for another woman.


	50. What's In Your Pack?

Isabela rummaged through Poppy's pack, pulling out item after item of junk.

"Poppy, sweet, what are you going to do with this?" she asked, holding up a small piece of something she was fairly sure was spider chitin.

True to her fair skin and dark auburn hair, Poppy blushed like, well, a champion. She shrugged and snatched the chitin back from Isabela. "I thought I'd show it to Solivitus."

"And this?" Isabela asked, pulling out a moldy rag doll. "Is this yours?"

"No," Poppy said hotly, grabbing the doll out of Isabela's hand. "But I were a child, I would want someone to bring me back my doll if they found it."

Isabela rolled her eyes and didn't even comment on the four pairs of torn trousers she dragged out of Poppy's pack.

She found the book of suggestive caricature and tucked that in her belt for later perusal.

Poppy cast her eyes down and shuffled her feet when Isabela pulled out the last two items.

"And what, pray tell," Isabela drawled, "use were you going to find for these?"

Poppy grabbed the stuffed parrot and peg leg away from Isabela and hid them under her coat. "It was something Merrill said about pirates. I was hoping I would find an eye patch…."

"And then?" Isabela asked, eyebrow arching.

Poppy cut a glance over to Fenris where he sat talking with Varric and blushed still brighter. "And then I was going to suggest playing a little game. At home. In the bedroom."

Isabela was sure she would stop laughing sometime around Summerday.


	51. Magic Touch

Garrett was certain he was in love with Anders – from his scruffy beard and scruffier pauldrons to that crooked smile he used only when he was saying something meant to make Garrett feel like the center of Anders' universe and fantasies.

And the things Anders did in the bedroom? The electricity thing that Isabela had hinted at was only the tip of the wonderful, beautiful, slightly perverse iceberg.

There was only one thing – other than the insignificant matters of his lover being an abomination in hiding from the Gray Wardens – that troubled him about falling into a relationship with Anders, and it had to do with the bedroom things.

Sadly, since his first night with Anders, he could not help the horrible thought that occasionally wandered through his head that his mother had also fallen in love with an apostate mage.

He cursed Anders for making him think about his parents' love life in that degree of detail.


	52. Ladykiller in Love

"He's following me again," Isabela complained.

Hawke did not give her complaint the care it was due. "He must like you. You could just talk to him about it."

"I don't care if he likes me," she snapped. "I want him to stop sniffing after me like that."

She put her hands on her hips and glared at the man who had _somehow_managed to convince her that love wasn't necessarily the four-letter word she had always thought it was.

"I am going to get some bitch to follow you around the same way," she promised.

"Threats are not going to help your case." Hawke pointed back to his mabari. "I told you to take it up with Barkspawn."


	53. Matching Underwear

Poppy would admit that she had entertained fantasies about both Anders and Fenris – Anders, Fenris, Isabela, Merrill, Sebastian, and Varric, if she was going to be honest with herself. Aveline was exempt simply because Poppy was rather certain that Aveline would beat her over the head even in her fantasies, and she had never seen the appeal of masochism.

She told her inner monologuer to be quiet about the masochism of fighting templars, slavers, and oh yes, let's not forget high dragons. Her inner monologuer also had a tendency to get sidetracked by shiny things, which was how she managed to finally silence it in favor of staring.

Anders and Fenris had somehow taken the brunt of the Varterral's caustic spit and were stripping down to their smalls.

_That_was shiny enough to distract even her inner monloguer from commenting on anything except the fact that they were both wearing…

…matching smallclothes.

And sneaking peeks at each other.

And when they both thought she was busy helping to reassure Varric that Bianca had not taken a mortal injury, she was _certain_she saw Anders grab Fenris' backside.

Her inner monologuer was stunned to silence.

Her inner pornographic friend ficcer on the other hand, started screaming in glee.

"Varric?"

"I think her stock is scratched, and if you—"

_"Varric!"_

"—look right there you can see where the acid—"

She grabbed Varric by the lapels of his coat. "Bianca is _fine!_ Give me a piece of parchment and a quill. _Now!"_


	54. Celery

"Do you have any celery?" Anders asked as he pillaged Hawke's larder. "No? I suppose the climate's wrong.

"Tomatoes!" he said triumphantly, standing up with two tomatoes in his hands.

"Anders," Hawke groaned, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Why are you awake?"

"Nightmares," Anders said absently while he poked around in cupboards. "Happens all the time, don't worry about it. It's perfectly normal. I wonder if it's too early to go down to the docks and get some fish."

"It's too early for everything except sleep," Hawke complained.

"You don't get to complain when you drag your friends all over the Free Marches at all hours of the day and night," Anders said before straightening from digging in the ice box with a sound of triumph. "Hah! I don't have to go to the docks after all. Orana must have gotten fish at the market."

He dug out a pan and dropped the fish into it.

"I'm going to bread and fry this, you can have a late night snack with me, and then we'll go back to bed."

Hawke ran his fingers through his hair and watched Anders bustle around the kitchen as though he had lived with him for years. "You're going to have a fish fry up and that's a snack?"

Anders turned away from crushing some dry bread, his eyes unfocused as he considered something for a moment before nodding. "You're right. Do you know how to make custard?"


	55. Will You?

Will you stand by his side and face down the fears of your childhood when they come in templar armor?

Will you stand firm and say "He is not a slave"?

Will you forgive her when she lies? When she runs? When she returns?

Will you find the money, return the amulet, take the wayward mage and be her friend?

Will you comfort a friend, love your brother, support your mother?

Will you forgive? Forget? Stand strong?

Will you live? Love? Cry?

Will you ever be your own person or will you be crushed under your own legend?


	56. Back to the Start

He remembers the first time he saw this courtyard with Mother, Bethany, and Aveline at his side. He remembers the first time his eyes tracked the statues and his errant thought that all the Gallows needed to turn this into a place of darkest despair would be for those statues to lower their hands from their faces and move.

He remembers that thought and his regret for ever thinking it is like a knife in the gut.

The statues lower their hands, climb down from their perches and rise from their crouches. Mother and Bethany are long gone, but Aveline puts her back against his and they raise their swords and shields together.

"Ever regret you followed us here?" he asks her lightly as he sees the few of his friends who have stayed by his side range themselves through the courtyard to brace themselves for the assault.

He counts the casualties – Bethany lost in the Deep Roads, Mother lost to murder, Isabela lost to her own treachery, Fenris lost to Hawke's choice to side with the mages, Sebastian lost to Hawke's choice to show Anders a cruel mercy in letting him live, but forcing him to run, Anders lost to Vengeance.

Most of his friends are gone, but he still has Aveline.

"Every day, Hawke," Aveline replies, and for a moment his heart sinks. "Now ask me if I'm ever grateful you brought me along."

"Are you ever grateful I brought you along?" he asks dutifully.

Five more steps. Four. Three. The battle will begin anew in just two more steps as the first of the statues staggers its way to them..

"Every day, Hawke," she says.

One.

It's enough.


	57. Red Rose

Alistair was a sweet man, charming and with a kind of self-deprecatory humor that made Lisbeth Amell forgive him for his past as a templar and for his occasional moments of shoving his foot in his mouth.

He was, she noted, not the sharpest blade in the arsenal. When he gave her a rose that he had carried across Ferelden and back again, schlepping it through the Deep Roads, the Brecilian Forest, and even more than one instance of dragon fire, it was as fresh as the day he had picked it in Lothering.

Alistair didn't question that miracle, and neither did Lisbeth.

He didn't question it because he was dear, but a little dense. Lisbeth didn't question it because it finally answered the question of why she occasionally caught Wynne casting spells at Alistair's backpack.


	58. Put On Your Sexy Boots

Isabela stood at the bow of the small ship she had appropriated by means of bribes, sexual favors, and one notable instance of a threatened castration and let the salt spray cool and tighten her skin.

She should feel free. She _was _free.

But….

But she knew that if she looked back over her shoulder she would see smoke rising in the distance from the city she had left behind.

Hawke was back there fighting a battle that Isabela had started.

She had left him a note, that should be good enough. It was better than she usually offered.

Hawke was back there and the qunari would be _enraged._

Not her problem.

Hawke was back there and he was a damn fine lay.

There would be others. She could go look up Zevran.

Hawke was back there and he was her _friend._

_Bastard._

"There's only one thing to do about this," she murmured to herself. "Put your sexy boots on and go back there to kick some ass with them."

While she was at it, she thought she might just kick Hawke's ass for taking away the freedom she had always had in not caring.


	59. Please Don't Leave Me

How many years had it been since she first met Anders? Six? Seven? Life moved in a blur – periods of boredom punctuated by islands of terror in the river of passing time.

There were islands she would love to go back and visit in that river, though – first smiles, first kisses, the first night spent in his arms. If she let herself she could still feel the first whisper of his magic along her skin when he raised his hand to caress her cheek.

He said he loved her, but that was a different man – a man whose secrets had made him sad, but not cruel.

She stared into Anders' eyes and saw the lies in them when she confronted him about the drakestone and sela petrae.

And the _potion._

The lies cut her like a knife. Cut her more deeply than the Arishok's sword in her gut.

And she, the Champion of Kirkwall, gave Anders the victory without even putting up a fight.

_Lie to me,_ she thought, feeling something inside her pull tight and then snap. _Lie to me, I promise I'll believe, but please don't leave._


	60. Graffiti

Found scrawled on walls throughout Kirkwall:

_For the best penetration in Kirkwall, see Isabela at the Hanged Man_

Drawn under that surprisingly literate line is a stick figure of a man with one dagger in his eye and another in his crotch.

_Mages do it magically._

_Revolution now!_ Beside which is scrawled _SOD YOUR REVOLUTION_

Found twenty feet up the outer wall of the Gallows in four foot tall letters: _Meredith is frigid, but Orsino's got a fire spell for that_

Carved into the privy wall in the Hanged Man:  
><em>I fell for a dwarf storyteller<br>A charming and erudite feller  
>Just because he ain't tall<br>Don't think that he's small  
>He plumbed me so deep he found my root cellar<em>

Under that: _You swore you'd never tell Isabela_


	61. lyrium and lyrium and

It's been years that the song has been threading its way through his life. It hums from the vials in his belt pouch, it winds a basso threnody through his mind when they venture into the Deep Roads, but worst are the choruses it sings down his spine when he has to lay his hands on warm, living spirals of lyrium carved deep into one man's flesh.

The song, the song, the song, so beautiful, so haunting, so thrilling. It makes Justice love this life outside the Fade.

The song, the song, the song, looping its melody across Fenris' body makes Anders hate this life where he could crave something and someone that will always hate him back.


	62. Good Thing I Have Extra Lives

He lost the first to a genlock. Not that he let Anders know that it was more than a flesh wound.

He lost the second to a bad fall off of the Vigil's wall. No, he would not be letting Anders in on that either.

The third was lost to the Warden Commander's mabari. He would never be allowed into the lodge meetings if anyone found out about that one.

The fourth? Drowning.

The fifth? Let it be known that Wade was not always as careful with molten metal as he should be.

The sixth to food poisoning. Or was it poison food? After all the Warden Commander did have enemies.

The seventh was lost to outright poisoning. How was he to know that he would have an allergic reaction when everyone around him was eating it just fine?

By the time the wardens told Anders that he had to give Ser Pounce-a-lot up, he was ready to go. It was getting too dangerous to be a Grey Warden and he only had two lives left.

He did feel a little bad about leaving the others so defenseless – the fool things kept falling down in battles and not getting up until Pounce reminded them where their spare lives were hiding – but sometimes a cat just had to be selfish.


	63. Funeral

Kirkwall was dotted with pyres, what was one more?

Admittedly, this was the only one started with magic, and the only one watched keenly to assure that the deceased stayed that way, but no one really noticed on a day when everyone had their own problems to consider and their own mourning to do.

Marian had noticed and ignored when Sebastian tried to offer her some words of reconciliation. Maker bless Isabela for coming between them before he could speak. She might have done what he wanted, but she had not done it for him, and she did not want to hear his words delivered in the mistaken conviction that she had taken his side.

She had not done it out of some misguided belief in justice – neither the ideal nor the spirit. Nor in vengeance – neither the sin and nor the demon. She had done it to give a man she loved what he dearly needed: rest.

She watched the pyre, the flames consuming what remained of his husk, and felt nothing but tired enough to join him in his rest.


	64. I Thought You'd Be Taller

Sigrun scrutinized the ragged band of refugees tracking through the gates of the Vigil. The Warden Commander had received word weeks before that an old friend in trouble would be coming, bringing along some new friends in trouble.

It sounded kind of fun and romantic actually, too bad she knew Anders. It ruined some of the romanticism. If there was one thing Sigrun knew, it was that legends cast a funny light on the people around them, made them loom larger when the stories got passed around.

On the up side, it meant that people were telling some amazing stories about the dead dwarf who served with the Warden Commander.

On the down side, it meant that she couldn't listen to the stories about other legends without more cynicism than usual.

Still, she was terribly curious about the dwarf she had heard about who traveled with the Champion. She had heard that he was a Paragon of Manliness, with a beard that spread magnificently over his chest, a battle axe that was taller than he was, and a voice that could make mountains tremble when he shouted.

She also heard that he pined forever for a lost love named Bianca and was just waiting for the right woman to come along to make him forget her.

No, she was not just a little twitterpated at the thought of meeting him. Not at all. She totally had not given her armor an extra shine that morning when the runner had come with the news that the group was nearly there.

Picking out the dwarf in the group was easy enough.

He was… not what she had expected. If his beard had spread over his chest, it was to emigrate there from his face. His axe was a crossbow, making him a man who didn't even go for close up fighting.

But his voice. He said something to Anders and laughed that laugh and if mountains didn't tremble, her knees certainly did.

He caught her staring and his smile faded just a little before coming back brighter than ever as he ambled over to greet her.

"You must be Sigrun," he said in that touchable voice of his that wandered in her ear and pulled the lever that switched her brain to "off" and her mouth to "on."

"You're Varric," she said. "I heard about you. There are all kinds of stories about you going around."

He chuckled. "I spread most of the good ones," he admitted and held his arms out away from his sides. "How do they match up?"

She looked him over and thought that with that expanse of chest, she could understand why his beard had decided to travel south. Which led to thoughts of wondering just how far south it had emigrated. Which led to her cheeks turning scarlet and her mouth spilling out the first thing that came to mind. "I thought you'd be taller."

He raised an eyebrow and looked down at himself before shrugging. "So did I."


	65. Love Me

She waited for him for years, watching him go from one lover to another, leaving a trail of red scarves in his wake, but he never turned his eyes to her. Not that way. She was always the friend, the third wheel, the little sister at most.

She never understood how he couldn't see it. She was _terrified_ that he did see it and ignored it.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised that none of this turned out like I'd hoped. Especially… with you."

How did he not hear the words behind it? Simple words. A simple meaning: _Love me._


	66. Protect Me

He holds the child in his hands for the first time – his child. His daughter, Bethany, and there is a moment when her eyes meet his and widen that he feels as though they share a perfect communion that he has missed since her namesake's death so many years before.

"I promise," he tells her in response to that look.

Merrill is exhausted, but she smiles up at him when he speaks. "What are you promising, _da len?"_

Carver brushes a thumb along the delicately pointed curve of his daughter's ear and says, "I promise that I will always protect her."


	67. I Eat, Drink, and Sleep Awesome

"'I eat, drink, and sleep awesome.' Come on. Run with it."

The marketing team muttered among themselves, shuffled papers, surreptitiously checked their phones or tapped on their laptops. No one seemed too pumped up by the standard Monday morning brainstorming meeting.

One of the newer guys offered, "Be as awesome as Hawke. Dragon Age 2."

There were a few groans and myriad head shakes.

"Anything else?"

Everyone tried to look anywhere but at the marketing manager.

"Come on. How hard can this be?" he cajoled. "'I eat, drink, and sleep awesome.'"

Finally, one of the senior designers coughed and held up his tablet for everyone to see.

"That's it!" There were nods, murmurs of agreement, and a laugh from one of the interns.

Later that month, new marketing materials were released with Varric's face and Dragon Age 2's new official unofficial tagline.


	68. The Puppy Who Lost His Way

Ser Pounce-a-lot considered the mabari pup carefully. It was graceless, ugly, floppy. Its skin did not fit, its paws were too big, and it was whining.

It was whining, it was lost, and a memory stirred of a time when he had been but a kitten, frightened and alone. A woman with a voice like a good stroke under the chin and hands that tingled with magic had picked him up and given him his Giver-of-Names-and-Pets-and-Food.

He remembered the Woman-With-the-Voice, and he remembered her hound, and he remembered how she had smelled of salt and sorrow when the hound had died.

He jumped on the pup's back and nipped its ear to guide its wobbly steps in the right direction toward the big hall where she usually could be found. He decided she needed to be owned again too.


	69. Five Stages of Grief

**Denial**  
>"What? Give Ser Pounce-a-lot up? Are you mad? No he isn't making me soft! Isn't that right Ser Pounce-a-lot?"<p>

_Meow._

**Anger**  
>"You can't make me give him up. Try it. Just bloody try it! Don't think I haven't got a fireball for the first sorry sod who tries to touch him."<p>

**Bargaining**  
>"I'll leave him at the keep. I won't bring him along anymore. You have to admit that there are always more mice and he's a good mouser. Aren't you Ser Pounce-a-lot?"<p>

_Meow._

**Depression**  
>"Fine. I'll find him a new home. What do I bloody have that's important anyway? Can't run away from the bloody nightmares, can't have one little thing that makes all this rot worth it. Where's Oghren and his special sauce? I need a vat of it."<p>

**Acceptance**  
>"Just… make sure he's happy, Delilah. I know you will, but… just let him know now and then that he'll never be forgotten."<p> 


	70. Reunion

He has waited years, he has grown older, wiser, even more clever if that is possible, but he has never forgotten.

He hears the voice before he sees him. It's the same voice but not; it's older, sadder, strangely fuller, but it's still so familiar it sparks a thrill, jolts him from his quiet place in the sunlight.

He's already coming to investigate when she comes for him and his happiness is already obvious. He allows her to carry him to this reunion, barely containing his impatience when she crosses the threshold and he sees him again for the first time.

He leaps, and finally, finally those arms are around him, that voice is crooning his name, and he is finally, _finally _home.

Humans all look alike to Ser Pounce-a-lot, but this one is his, and he has never forgotten.


	71. Brave New World

On his first night outside the Fade, he offered to keep watch. Kristoff's body did not need sleep. It needed nothing, in fact, except perhaps its final rest, but that could not come yet. He regretted that necessity, but it was a necessity.

He watched the others sleep and marveled at them. They were so unaware of what they were – they were _creators _that every spirit and demon in the Fade emulated, willingly or unwillingly. Even he had done so, with his armor and form that had been nothing more than spirit molded to what dreaming minds had told him they might see as a bringer of justice.

But here? He prodded Kristoff's arm curiously with a finger. It was solid, immutable.

What a strange, brave, _terrifying _new world this was, where the only things that changed at a whim were minds. He consoled himself that he was among these people, but not of them; even his mind would not change.

He would learn differently with time, but that first night he was lost in the wonder and illusion of permanence.


	72. That's Not My Name

"Daisy, come on," Varric said carefully. "You should come outside for a while. It will do you good to get some fresh air."

She did not turn from her contemplation of the Eluvian. "That's not my name."

He stopped, nonplussed. "What?"

"I said," she enunciated carefully, turning to look at him, her face set in grim lines that he had never seen there before. "That is not my name. My name is Merrill of the Alerion clan, and if I am all my clan has left…" Here her eyes blazed with both grief and fury, "then you _will call me by my name!"_


	73. Expecting

Oghren had never given much thought to what he wanted from his time with Felsi. Sure, he wanted to grease up the old bronto and go to the races, and he wanted a woman who could give as good as she could get, but no one, _no one_ was going to accuse old Oghren of undue sentimentality. Nug-headed loyalty, yes. Sentimentality? No.

So when Felsi dropped the news that there was a nugget on the way, his second most eloquent response was a slack-jawed stare. His third most eloquent response was, "Well I'll be dipped in sauce and thrown to the stalkers."

His most eloquent response was sticking around to watch her get big. He teased her about her waddle, asked her if she needed him to roll her from place to place like a boulder. He put up with the punches, the socks to the jaw, and the memorable occasion she had beaten him with his own codpiece after he had asked her if things ever went back to normal, you know, _down there_.

He also put up with the tears that made him squirm in his boots, the uncomfortable moments when she spun stories of the three of them in a house under the open sky, and the sound of her singing lullabies to the little creature that had taken up residence in her belly.

Something inside of him thought that maybe, just maybe, he could do this father thing.

Then he had seen the nugget and felt that strange emotion that made him feel like he would never be good enough for what he and Felsi had made.

Worse, he had seen the look in her eyes that said she was expecting him to try.

He packed his things that night.


	74. Truth and Justice

It was all very civilized. Justice had learned about civility from watching those around him while Anders went about his life, Truth had learned about civility from watching people's dreams.

She served him tea. If the little chintz parlor had only fragments of walls and floated in the enduring light of the Fade, that was irrelevant to the fact that they were going to sit down and have tea while she asked him the most important question of them all.

"Was it worth it?"

He held the ethereal teacup in his gauntleted hand and stared past her, seeing a scarlet-lit sky and flagstones painted with blood.

And she knew the truth.


	75. Just Before Morning

It is the night before they leave for Denerim, quite probably for the last time. Zevran has waited patiently all night, and that, more than the earring, more than a word he has bandied about when it has been useful, more than the _fear _that Zevran feels, tells him that he has gone and done the most foolish thing ever.

He has fallen in love with his warden.

When Dal finally returns to the room they were supposed to share that last night, he sets his staff wearily by the door. His expression is shuttered, his movements slow as though he is already mourning.

"Zevran," he says. Not "Zev" or "my beautiful one" or "lover" but Zevran.

Zevran does not know what Dal plans to tell him, but he will give anything to forestall it. He is off the bed, his fingers pressed to Dal's lips before he can send him away or make some dire confession.

Now that they are so close, he can see a bit of oil glistening on Dal's neck, smell incense on his skin, and his lips are full from someone else's kisses.

He sees these things and Dal sees him seeing them.

Zevran has been trained to take pain without flinching, but it takes everything he has ever learned in the brothels and from the Crows to keep the wound from bleeding for Dal to see. This is why Crows and whores do not love.

"It is near dawn," he says in the face of Dal's guilt. "Come to bed." He forces a jaunty smile. "No one should go dancing with an archdemon with bloodshot eyes. They take it so personally."


	76. I Hope You're Happy

Hawke thinks that he will feel the jolt up his arm over and over for the rest of his life, but Anders only sucks in a breath that sounds strangely surprised and topples off the crate. He feels the impact of his fall, although he hopes that Anders does not.

He wants the world to stop, just for a moment, just for long enough for him to gather up the pieces of his shattered heart, but it does not.

Sebastian speaks when he should not. "It will never be enough, but it's a start."

It is all Hawke can do not to drive the knife into Sebastian to send him to the ground to join Anders. He chooses words instead of steel and bites them off one at a time.

"I hope you're happy."

Aveline pulls Sebastian away before he can answer. Hawke almost hates her for her insight.

He turns his eyes toward the Gallows and repeats himself, this time for a man who can no longer hear him, "I hope you're happy."


	77. Prepare to be Boarded

Hawke is _not _in the mood to be woken from the first sleep seasickness has allowed her in days by the sounds of running feet and shouts. Beside her Anders sits up, both panic and Fade fire flickering in his eyes.

The question is on both their lips: _Templars?_

Isabela answers the question by throwing open the door to their cabin, grinning manically. "Rise and shine, darlings. Someone thinks they're going to plunder our booty."

Hawke and Anders exchange an irritated look and reach for their staves.

Piracy is always a risk. You never know what you're going to get. Sometimes there's booty or _booty_, and sometimes there's just the boot.


	78. Warden Sebastian

Sebastian held the Joining chalice and looked into the expectant faces gathered around him. It was funny how many "for life" titles he had held and left behind – Prince of Starkhaven, Chantry brother, friend of the Champion.

He swirled the vile ichor in the chalice – black and poisonous – and considered that if he lived through this choice, he would have another "for life" title.

This one he would never set aside, if for no other reason than to prove that he _was _different from the abomination.

He raised the chalice in a toast. "See you on the other side. _Slainte."_


	79. The complete 'People's Laws of Kirkwall'

Section 1: Personal Injury  
>[1. Murder is punishable by...] <strong>scratched out<strong>  
>[2. Use of deadly force is...] <strong>scratched out<strong>  
>3. Don't be an asshole.<p>

Section 2: Property Crime  
>[1. Theft is punishable by...] <strong>scratched out<strong>  
>[2. Vandalism is...] <strong>scratched out<strong>  
>3. Don't be an asshole.<p>

Section 3: Separation of Church and State  
>1. Don't be an asshole.<p>

Varric looked at the page Hawke handed him and shook his head. "Hawke, I don't know how to break this to you..."

Hawke cut him off. "Varric... don't be an asshole."


	80. Make a Move

They sat around the table staring at the last puff pastry. As with most Grey Warden meals, the table had started groaning with food and was now stripped bare.

Sigrun flicked her eyes from Nathaniel to Oghren, from Oghren to Anders, and from Anders to Velanna. They were _all_ coveting that last pastry.

Anders raised a hand and Sigrun slammed a dagger into the tabletop. "Who's hungrier? Any bets? Because I'm thinking I'm the hungriest duster here."

She slowly pushed herself off her stool and leaned forward. "And if anyone else thinks otherwise, well…" She tugged the knife out of the wood. "Make a move."


	81. Reap What You Sow

In retrospect Anders finally saw how deadly dangerous it had been to give the Divine any ideas on how they might fight back against the mages. Kirkwall had indeed been the perfect fertile ground for seeding horrors – the knowledge that Qunari had a thing called _gaatlok_, the evidence that both mages and templars were corruptible, and the Chantry, of course the Chantry.

He should have known that if he could find the recipe that used drakestone and sela petrae, so could they.

Still, it drove him to his knees the first time he saw a Circle tower erupt in red light.


	82. You Break It, You Buy It

"Thaaaaat, is very fragile, " Xenon drawled as Poppy hovered her hand over the butterfly. It looked as though it had been spun out of wisps of morning fog. She thought that if she breathed on it just the right way that it would take flight.

She looked down at her gauntleted hand, at her heavy mail and shook her head. That butterfly was everything she was not.

She didn't realize how much she _wanted_ it until she turned around, hand already going to her belt for her coin purse. "How much?"

She glanced back over her shoulder and thought of carrying that home to Hightown herself. "And can Urchin deliver it in one piece?"


	83. Scars

Zevran lay back on the blanket, one hand mostly shielding his eyes from the sunlight, the other idly tracing lines of scars across Dal's bare skin. It was a strange game that people seemed to play sooner or later, but was most enjoyable played in the nude – the game was _tell me about your scars._ Although Zevran generally preferred _I'll show you mine if you show me yours._

They were taking turns. There had been the expected – genlocks, bandits, jealous lovers – and the unexpected: "And then she hit me with the frying pan full of sizzling bacon. See the grease burns right here?"

Instead of choosing a scar this time, Dal asked, "Which is your favorite?"

Zevran lay still, soaking up the sun and considering one mark after another before the right answer came to him. He grinned and moved his hand to be able to see Dal's face. "It's the one you didn't give me the first time I suggested you needed a massage."


	84. Chick Magnet

It started in some village that Shale couldn't be bothered to remember the name of. She had lost herself in contemplation of the myriad opportunities for squishing things she had found in the company of "It", and when she came back from her happy thoughts of bone and flesh giving way under her fists, there was one by her foot.

It was so tiny that it was almost beneath her notice, and so fluffy and yellow that she had not realized it was a vile avian until it had run peeping away into the brush.

She refused to consider that little sound it made _cute_.

It happened again when they stopped at an isolated farm so that the weak flesh things that traveled with "It" could take refuge inside the farmhouse for the night.

She chose to stay outside. Even if "It" had not gifted her with her lovely – and slimming – fire crystals, the cold meant nothing to her.

In the morning there were more of the little yellow fluffy _things_ clustered around her feet, apparently drawing warmth from the heat that suffused her stone thanks to the crystals.

"Oh." "It" came out on the porch and took in the sight. "Oops."

Shale looked up from contemplating whether the little things were even big enough for a satisfactory squish. "It says oops? Why is it saying oops?"

"Er…" "It" scratched its head and shifted from foot to foot. "I think we ate their mother last night." It essayed a smile. "But I think they like you?"

She began to raise her foot when "It" said something that gave her pause.

"They make you look taller?"


	85. Imaginary Friend

When they first joined, Anders would sometimes think of Justice as his imaginary friend.

"You know," Anders explained to Varric once, "that voice in your head that isn't exactly you, but isn't exactly _not_ you? So you give it a name, and there you go, an imaginary friend."

Over time, Justice began to understand. There was a voice in their head that wasn't exactly Anders, that wasn't exactly Justice, but had not been created from whole cloth.

Its voice grew louder, and they both heard its strident calls to action.

Together they named their imaginary friend.

They called him Vengeance.


	86. I think something I ate disagreed

For a blessed change, they weren't the ones getting pounded by a big freaking dragon. If Fenris had not pointed out that the men down in the pit were wearing the distinctive livery of one of the region's most notorious slaver rings, Hawke might even have led her friends down to provide assistance. As it was, she found herself a nice, sheltered outcropping of rock above the fighting and lay down on her stomach to watch the battle.

After a moment's consideration, Fenris unslung his sword and stretched out beside her, quickly joined by Isabela and Merrill.

"I wish we had a snack," Hawke murmured absently as the dragon tossed a slaver into the air over and over again. "This is better than watching a play."

Merrill hissed in sympathy when one of the slavers stabbed his sword into the dragon's forefoot, making the great beast jerk its foot away and hold it off the ground. "I hate when I hurt my foot."

Isabela dug in her pack and pulled out a bottle of rum. "If we aren't going to be fighting it, we might as well enjoy the show," she said, pulling the cork and taking a swig before passing it to Hawke.

"Excellent!" Fenris said with feral approval when the dragon flicked its tail and slammed one of the slavers into the pit's rock wall. He took the bottle when Hawke passed it to him with a murmur of thanks, drinking even as he kept his attention fixed on the battle below.

They all sighed appreciatively when the dragon picked up another slaver and tossed him high in the air before simply opening its jaws wide and swallowing the man whole.

The next time it spat fire out on the last remnants of what had once been at least a dozen slavers, it also spat out the slaver's now-gleaming, acid-polished armor.

Isabela burst out laughing. "Looks like it ate something that disagreed with it." She nudged Hawke with her elbow. "Get it? Disagreed?"

Hawke groaned and snatched back the bottle of rum from Fenris. "Isabela, that was terrible."


	87. Let's Meet the Meat

Dal, Oghren, and Alistair waited for Zevran to return from scouting farther down the stairs. It had seemed a wise idea after Oghren had stumped his foot down in a leghold trap and nearly alerted the entire temple to their presence with his angry shouts.

Dal nearly jumped out of his skin when Zevran stepped out of the shadows, practically appearing out of thin air at his side.

"I have good news and bad news, my friends," Zevran said in a low voice.

"That means screaming," Alistair groaned. "Good news, bad news with this lot never means, 'I found a room full of comfy beds, warm baths, and exotic cheeses.' No, it means 'I found a room full of screaming and stabbing and something is going to die.'"

"That brings me to the good news part of things," Zevran said, patting Alistair's armored arm as though comforting a small child. "As we are all hungry and none of us averse to trying a little something exotic, yes?"

Considering their supplies had run out the day before and asking two Grey Wardens to fight on empty stomachs was asking for two very irritable Grey Wardens, no, none of them were averse to a little something exotic.

"Exotic food," Dal said, "sounds fine, except I have to wonder at your idea of exotic."

"Let me finish with the good news first," Zevran said. "We are none of us accomplished chefs, no?"

Zevran's idea of cooking involved waving things at the fire to ensure they knew each other by name and then eating, Alistair cooked everything to a uniform brown mush, no one trusted Oghren to even _touch_ their food, and Dal… Dal had a knack for giving every dish exactly the right amount of exactly the wrong seasoning. Even if all he did was skewer a rabbit over a fire, he would choose exactly the wrong firewood to impart just the right degree of inedibility.

They all agreed with Zevran's point.

"Then we are in luck," Zevran told them. "Because our meal will cook itself."

"Drop the other boot," Oghren growled. "What's the bad news?"

Zevran shrugged. "That depends on whether you think dining on dragon meat tonight is good news or bad news."

Alistair groaned, Dal sighed. Oghren pulled his axe off his back and hefted it eagerly. "I thought you said there was bad news in there. Let's go meet the meat."


	88. You I Like

Hawke held up a bag of coins in front of a man wearing Red Irons' colors. "Here is all of Meeran's coin for the job with Lord Harimann. We can't take that job. You take that back to Meeran, we go our own way, everything's even. We clear?"

The man flicked a glance at Varric, who had Bianca trained on him. He flicked another glance at Anders, who was pointing his staff right at his head. He considered Isabela and the knives she held in her hands, and he chose the path of most resistance.

He spat at Hawke's feet. "I'll take the money, but we aren't even, and we aren't clear. I will find you and I will gut you and I—" A crossbow bolt suddenly sprouted from his open mouth before he fell to the ground at Hawke's feet.

Hawke looked to the next man in Red Irons' colors. "Here is all of Meeran's—"

"We're clear," the man interrupted. "I speak for myself and all the rest of the men when I say we are so clear, serah."


	89. Agree to Disagree

Wynne had offered advice to young men and women for so long that it came to her as naturally as breathing. She didn't find it so very strange to be offering an Antivan Crow unsolicited advice on matters of love.

"Don't you think that he has enough on his mind right now, Zevran?" Wynne asked, looking over at the fire where Dal was poring over a map of Ferelden with Alistair. "He is a Grey Warden _and _a mage. He should be focusing on assembling the armies and honing his skills."

"Not gadding about with a ridiculously handsome assassin, you mean?" Zevran asked lightly.

For a moment Wynne considered that Zevran's light banter was the last thing many men and women had ever heard on this side of the Veil, but she pressed on. "Not gadding about with anyone, I mean. Zevran, all I am asking is that you think of the future. Everyone's future."

"Speaking of the future, think of the beautiful dusky-skinned babies he and I will fail to make together," Zevran said with a laugh before the laugh and all traces of humor in his expression disappeared. "You know that I respect you for your beauty and your ability, not to mention that you can set me on fire, but on this we shall simply have to agree to disagree."


	90. Present Company Excluded

"I am beginning to think that I am not ashamed of being a dwarf," Shale confided to Zevran as they kept watch while Oghren and It slept. Oghren thrashed and muttered in his sleep. It was an unmoving lump under It's blankets. The two men were exhausted after all the fighting, and they had yet to even reach Cadash Thaig.

"What has changed your mind, oh great and dazzling one?" Zevran asked while he carefully cleaned away all trace of darkspawn blood from his blade. "Are they not tiny and squishy as you have so often said?"

"They are, but they have a core that may as well be stone," Shale said slowly while she tried to put into words the reasons for her shift in attitude. "And if what It says about Caridin is true, then I was once a dwarf, so obviously they are not so inferior."

Oghren took that moment to roll over and break wind so loudly Deep Stalkers for miles around would likely come seeking their queen.

"Present company excluded," Shale said dryly.


	91. Look at Me

"I must leave you."

Dal glanced up from his book and froze, taking in the fact that Zevran was not just armed, not just armored, but that he had a pack slung over his back.

"Ah." He forced himself to breathe again and looked back down at his book, seeing only the pale yellow of the page and wandering insects that were probably letters. He had known the time would come. One loved an assassin only at great peril, after all.

_"Amor," _Zevran knelt in front of him, bringing a familiar scent of leather and spice that Dal had come to think of as home. He took the book from Dal's unresisting fingers and set it on the floor. "Look at me."

Dal raised his eyes, his features tight with the effort of self-control. How he loved that face, loved to trace the graceful lines of his tattoo down his cheek, loved to… He quelled the thoughts. He had learned long ago in the Circle that these things could not last, no matter how he wanted them to. It was his own fault for growing too attached.

"Write me if you can," he said before Zevran could give him some justification for his leaving. He knew it sounded chilly, but he hoped that a bit of ice would keep his heart from audibly breaking before his lover – _ex_-lover – left the room.

Zevran shook his head, smiling ruefully. "I have phrased it poorly, have I not? I must leave you for a few weeks, but nothing could keep me from returning to your side." He raised his hand to touch Dal's smooth earlobe. "But before I leave, we shall see my token placed where it belongs, yes? I do not give my wedding proposal to just anyone."


	92. Pants that eat your eyeballs!

"Hey, Warden!"

Dal paused on his way through the mess hall and turned toward the source of the gravelly call. "What can I do for you, Oghren?"

Oghren thumped his tankard on the table and waved for Dal to come closer – a perilous prospect for anyone with a functioning nose (and occasionally taste buds, Oghren's belches sometimes had multiple dimensions to their foulness). But Dal went and sank down on the bench next to the dwarf.

"Problems, my friend?"

Oghren grunted. "Eh, not so much, but I know I can trust you not to lead me wrong."

Dal raised an eyebrow. "I do my best."

"So it's about them schleets."

"I told you those weren't real already," Dal reminded him.

"Uh huh," Oghren agreed before he emptied a pouch out on the table sending dozens of tiny black balls rolling across the surface. "which is why I wanted to ask you if maybe these aren't really schleet eggs."

Dal wrinkled his nose when a non-Oghren odor hit him. He rose from the bench and took a step back. "Goat dung, Oghren. My word on it."

He was going to _have_to have a word with Sigrun.


	93. Oh don't tell me that!

"I should have known Branka would end up like that," Oghren suddenly burst out, breaking his silence for the first time in many hours since leaving Caridin's final resting place.

"Squashed flat under a golem's fist?" Shale asked.

"I'll have you know that I poisoned her first," Zevran said. "Do not underestimate the sneakiness."

Dal waved for the two of them to be silent. "You should have known she would have ended up like what?" he asked Oghren, trying to draw him out.

"With Hespith," Oghren muttered. "She had this thing, she kept it in the 'toy chest' and called it her Little Man. She'd strap it on—"

Dal heard Zevran snicker as he coughed and cut Oghren off. "Don't tell me that!"


	94. Send the Rain

The storm had begun to gather as though called by the shaft of light that cut the sky and shattered the Chantry. She'd had no time to notice it then, there were too many things to do, lives to save, to take, to watch thrown away.

Clouds came like shrouds for the dead, but she'd had no time to notice.

Thunder rumbled a distant threat, but she'd had no time to notice among the immediate crash of blade on blade, shouted spells, screams, and wrenching pleas for mercy that could not come.

Lightning lit the sky, but she'd had no time to notice when her eyes were trained to the flash of swords and the crackles of desperate spells.

The air grew heavy with the promise of rain, but she did not notice when it was already heavy with magic and blood.

When it was over, and just begun, she backed away from Meredith's molten corpse and turned her face up to the lowering sky.

She had turned on her own kind.

_I'll never be clean again._

She had thrust a knife deep into her own heart in killing the man she loved.

_It'll never wash away._

Everything that mattered was gone.

She raised her arms to the sky and thrust the blunted edge of her magic up into the clouds with a scream of rage and pain and grief.

_Send the rain._ But she would never stop feeling the stain.


	95. Emotionally Compromised

He's fun.

Okay, so he's fun and unreasonably gorgeous, but there are plenty of unreasonably gorgeous men to be found across Thedas.

He's fun, unreasonably gorgeous, and loyal.

For now.

Isabela looks back at the dark smudge on the horizon and sighs.

He's fun, unreasonably gorgeous, loyal for now, and in deep shit.

That dark smudge would be Kirkwall burning. Her imagination fills in the grey giants on an ordered rampage through the streets, the smell of blood, the screams.

Not her problem.

Her imagination fills in his face, blood-spattered and twisted, betrayed. She pictures his face (lips just full enough to be kissable, not so full as to be feminine) slack in death, those (long-fingered, clever on her body) hands of his limp, never to touch another man or (lying back letting her direct him as she pleases, moving just so) woman again. She imagines his voice (perfect when lost in a moan) never quipping when he should be placating again.

Her stomach clenches, and for the first time in more years than she cares to consider, the pitching deck under her feet feels truly unstable.

Until she calls the order to turn back toward Kirkwall.

He so owes her for this. He so owes her for making her _feel._

Bastard.


	96. I Forgive You  'Legacy Spoilers'

**LEGACY SPOILERS HERE. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED**

* * *

><p>"Don't." Anders turned his face away, missing both the attempt at a kiss and the hurt that flashed across Hawke's face before his expression settled into cautious neutrality. "We have to end this. You deserve better."<p>

He tried to resist when Hawke lightly gripped his chin and turned his face back to meet his eyes, but Hawke refused to allow it. Anders' eyes brimmed with unshed tears, his fingers plucked restlessly at his coat, his entire stance said he wanted to _run._

"Don't you see?" he pleaded, "I'm not strong enough to resist the voices in my head. If you don't let me end this… What I did was unforgivable and it will only get worse." Helplessly, he repeated what he had told Hawke the first time they kissed. "It will be a disaster."

Hawke moved his staff – the Key – to his back and pulled Anders into an embrace despite the other man's attempts to resist. "My father sacrificed to protect those he loved," he murmured, looking past Anders' shoulder to his brother. "He gave a little piece of his soul for me and for my mother. Maybe you should work out that Hawke men don't just give up because of little things like blood magic or possession."


	97. Let me go back in there and

Isabela lay back on the bed and watched her captor undress. She had managed to turn the tables on him hours ago, but by the Maker's favorite dangly bits, he was too delicious to leave without having just a little taste.

Dumb – he didn't even know that she'd gotten the key out of his pocket five minutes after she woke up – but look at those muscles! She was practically salivating by the time he pushed his trousers off his hips, and then she had to lean up on her elbows just to prove to herself that she really was seeing what she was seeing.

"I am one lucky—"

The door exploded inward and Hawke filled the doorway with his great bulk.

"She's here," he shouted, muscling in and felling Isabela's would-be lover with a pommel strike right in the middle of the man's forehead. He dropped without a sound and Hawke strode across the room to snatch Isabela off the bed to drag her out into the hall where Varric, Aveline, and Merrill waited.

"But—" Isabela started to protest, casting a longing glance back over her shoulder.

"We're rescuing you," Merrill informed her.

Aveline spared a dour glance at the nude man on the floor and snorted.

"From great peril," Merrill added as Hawke started down the hall with Isabela in tow.

Isabela twisted her wrist in Hawke's grasp, but the man might as well have been made of iron. "That's nice and all, but really… let me go back in there and face the peril." She thought of what she'd gotten an all-too brief glimpse of, and felt like a child denied a toy on her name day morning. "I can take it."


	98. Since You've Been Gone

"So, you're back."

Isabela dug the toe of her boot into the blood-soaked carpet and shrugged. "Looks like it."

Hawke shooed Anders away from his fussing over the great leaking wound in Hawke's midsection and pushed himself up off the stairs. He was good at hiding his pain, but Isabela winced at whatever she saw on his face.

"I don't know if you noticed," he ground out past the sense of bits of himself sliding in directions they weren't designed to go, "but while you were gone, we had a bit of a dust-up."

Isabela swept the room with a glance, taking in the Qunari bodies, the sodden carpet, the fallen Arishok, and brought her eyes back to Hawke again. "Looks like you handled it."

Behind Hawke, Aveline snorted, but Hawke silenced her with a gesture, never taking his eyes off of Isabela.

"I did. Now what am I going to do with you?"

Isabela took a single step forward and felt a slow smile spread as she tilted her head up to meet Hawke's eyes. "Handle me."


	99. Goodnight Kiss

There were things Anders expected out of life – templars, running, darkspawn, bouts of mind-numbing terror, and more running.

There were things Anders wanted out of life – a good meal, a place where he didn't have to run, an attractive partner, the chance to shoot lightning at fools, and every night a goodnight kiss.

With the wardens, he got far too much out of the first category, and not nearly enough out of the second.

But every night, whether he was curled in his bedroll in some Deep Roads cavern or stretched out in his bunk in Vigil's Keep, he got his goodnight kiss.

"Who's a good kitty, Ser Pounce-a-lot?" He planted a kiss on the cat's forehead.

_Meow._

"You are. Yes you are."


	100. Weep

The time had come. The weight of the last straw piled on top of a millennium of other straws had broken him, and now that same weight had settled on his heart until every beat seemed to come with only the greatest off efforts and only because Vengeance was not through with him yet.

Every time Anders closed his eyes, he could see his gift to the Chantry, nestled deep in its bowels waiting for his signal. When the time came, there would be no time for tears; Vengeance would not have them.

But on this night in his clinic, Vengeance held less sway.

Surrounded by reminders that all he had ever wanted to do was live, and that once he had been more than just an embodiment of the fears the Chantry used to oppress his kind, Anders wept for his broken heart and all the hearts that he would soon break.

Not even Vengeance could take that from him.


	101. The Smolder

"It turned you down," Shale observed.

Zevran watched Dal walk away before he turned his attention to the golem looming over his shoulder. "It is all going according to plan, my friend."

"Your plan was to proposition it to do squishy things," Shale's distaste could not have been more evident if she had actually been capable of looking nauseated, "and have it say no?"

"Yes," Zevran said simply. "He is not a man of casual appetites, I see this now. I shall bank the fires and bring out a weapon better suited to the occasion."

"You are going to stab it?"

Zevran wondered yet again how this mage collected such unlikely companions. The walking wall of rock sounded almost eager to see the theoretical stabbing take place, and he—well he was the sort to do such theoretical stabbing, was he not?

But no.

He told himself that it was in his interest to maintain the Warden's curiosity and to encourage his (_brasca, _why so faint?) faint attraction to something more advantageous.

"No, my dear Shale, I am not going to stab him." He leered because he was supposed to, even if he was not really feeling it. "At least not with a knife."

Before Shale could ask for an explanation, Zev continued. "For now, I will use the smolder. He will see the heat in my eyes and it will not be as lurid as I profess. He will wonder. He will consider. And there will come a time, when curiosity brings him to me. He is a man who must touch the fire to know if he will be burned."

"So you plan to burn it," Shale said, sounding strangely satisfied.

Zevran let his eyes turn back to the Warden and wondered – just who would get burned in this?


	102. Glorious

Once upon a time, before the blight, even before his Harrowing, Widald Amell had tried to imagine his life and where it would take him.

His imaginings had not been filled with great expectations – at best he had imagined that he might be allowed to be a magical historian, keeping old knowledge from being lost to the sands of time. It was respectable, but… it did not qualify as a dream he yearned to fulfill. It was simply the best that life had taught him to expect.

Which is to say that in his wildest dreams, he had not considered freedom, travel, or adventure. He had never considered that common people would call him – a _mage_– a hero.

And he had never considered love.

Now he sat in his office, desk piled high with bills for repairs to the Vigil, complaints from citizens of the razed city of Amaranthine, requests and demands from citizens high and low, law books so huge and dusty that the Shapers of Orzammar would have been envious, and this was not adventure.

It was almost closer to being an historian after all.

But…

Stretched out on the floor by his desk using Dal's mabari as a pillow, Zevran held a book in one hand while he worked his way through the apple held in the other.

He was ruthless, he was conniving, he was not even human, and he was Dal's. All his. Body, heart and soul.

Zevran felt Dal's scrutiny and moved the book aside to smile up at him. "Are you well, my love?"

_My love._

For a moment responsibility could go hang. He met Zev's smile with one of his own and nodded. "Glorious."


	103. Sick Day

"You can't leave me here." Zevran punctuated his protest with a sneezing fit that made Dal's mabari twitch and growl.

Dal lifted his chin, signalling Wynne to come to take charge of Zev before he tried anything foolish.

"I give you my word that I will watch over him for you," Leliana said, adjusting her sword and dagger before joining Alistair and Shale where they waited to leave the camp. "You two are too cute to let anything ruin it now."

"The elf must stay in camp," Shale said, adding her two coppers. "It is particularly gooey today. Just when I think squishy things cannot produce more fluids, I am proven wrong."

Even with streaming eyes, a bright red nose, and skin that alternately flushed with fever or turned mottled and clammy with chills, Zevran raised an eyebrow at that. "We have yet to discuss all fluids, my friend."

Leliana giggled.

Alistair coughed, holding his hands up to fend off Dal's glare. "Sorry. Just swallowed something wrong."

Before Zevran could respond and up the ante, Dal cut in. "Sick day. Now. My tent."

Wynne put an arm around Zev's shoulder. "Come along, I'll put you to bed."

Dal smiled when Zev let her turn him toward the tent. The last they heard from the elf as they left the camp was, "My darling Wynne, how long I have waited for this day."


	104. Walk the Line

"Left. Left. Right..." Merrill wound the string back onto its spool as she backtracked from the market.

Today she had fresh berries, perfect apples, walnuts, and the most lovely greens. She was lost in thought, winding the thread automatically, thinking of dinner, the Eluvian, where Hawke might take them next, that lovely story that Varric...

She turned a corner and bumped into someone in her path, apologizing automatically before realizing to whom she was apologizing.

Varric held the other end of her twine, neatly rolled into a ball.

"I went to see you in the alienage and I saw the string," he said, tilting his head up at her, a faint smile turning up the corners of my lips. "I thought to myself, 'Daisy's out having an adventure' and Bianca and I decided we'd see if there was a good story in it."

Merrill held up her market basket. "Did you know that they _sell_nuts at the market? They might as well sell rocks. You can pick both up off the ground."

"Let's not disparage selling rocks," Varric said. He took the basket from her and held out a hand to indicate their direction. "It's how I make the money that keeps us all in twine and carta protection and rounds on the house at the Hanged Man. May I escort you home?"

"Oh." _Oh._She connected the fact that Varric held the other end of her ball of twine with the fact that she wouldn't be able to find her way home on her own.

"Yes, please."

Sometimes she wondered why Varric took such interest in her.

Varric offered his arm and let Merrill take it to lead her home. Sometimes he wondered why she didn't see why he took such interest in her.


	105. Written in Code

**Written in Code, Written in Blood, Written on My Heart**  
>'Twas a strange thing, this love of which she read. Her mother spoke disparagingly of it, telling her tales of men's duplicity and women's weakness for a word that was more lie than truth.<p>

She grew up nursed on lessons of how to use this weakness against others, and if some part of her mind doubted all of her mother's lessons, what basis did she have to decode the truth from the lie?

'Twas a strange thing, this feeling that grew in her, nurtured in blood and death, trust and sacrifice. Every time she tested him, expecting him to fail, he surpassed himself.

What woman could say her lover slew a dragon, the dragon for her? He spoke of love, and the word thrilled in her blood. He used her weakness more masterfully than her mother had ever trained her to - she saw and still she allowed it.

More the fool was she.

'Twas a strange thing, when she saw him once again at the Eluvian. All the times that she had derided bards' songs of devotion and forgiveness came back to mock her thrice over. Stranger still the way her heart leapt before she turned to face him.

She spoke of curiosity, but it was a lie.

She spoke of change, and that was a truth. There was change to come, and there were changes that had already come to pass.

Her mother had taught her that love was a weakness, etched that belief right into the muscle of her heart.

He rewrote everything and she allowed it. Perhaps that was strength - to stand on the precipice of change and then to leap.


	106. Nothing to Hide

"Look at 'em," Oghren grumbled, waving his tankard toward the motley collection who were supposed to save Ferelden - and consequently the rest of Thedas - from the Blight. "Not a one of them isn't hiding something."

He belched and punched Dal's bicep with his free hand. "Every last one, even you. Nah, especially you."

Dal rubbed his arm and frowned. "You have a point, I'm assuming."

Oghren grunted and slid a little lower, trying to find just the right angle to prop himself against the log they were sharing. Getting comfortable in full plate mail was a challenge, but Oghren rarely seemed to take it off despite that.

"Probably," he said, watching Leliana dole a portion of stew from the communal pot into a bowl for Alistair. Waiting his turn for a portion, Zevran said something to Wynne that made her laugh and lightly swat him with her own empty bowl. Sten crouched with his meal and fed a piece of meat to Dal's mabari, Walter.

Shale stood at the periphery, allowing Sandal to turn her crystals until the whole array suddenly flared a brighter green. The dwarf cried, "Enchantment!" while his father looked on, beaming with unconcealed pride.

And outside the communal warmth, the yellow flash of Morrigan's eyes before she saw Oghren's regard and turned away to busy herself with her own meal preparations.

Dal followed Oghren's gaze, mentally sifting through his companiosns as his eyes fell upon them - their wants, their needs, their strengths and weaknesses, and of course their secrets. He had to know them to know how best to use them. It was cold, but it was a cold time in Ferelden.

"Are you going to share your point?" he asked.

"Eh," Oghren picked at his beard and said nothing for so long that Dal started to think that the dwarf had passed out on him. It would hardly be the first time. "I'm just saying… Branka started thinking about people like just tools and look what happened."

Zevran collected two bowls from Leliana and left the circle of firelight, walking toward them with a spring in his step that Dal found endlessly fascinating despite his best efforts not to.

Oghren grunted again and pushed himself up off the ground with a series of guttural noises that would have made Dal fear for the dwarf's health if he did not know him so well. He looked down at Dal and then at Zevran and said, "Just think about it," before he left Dal to let Leliana feed him.

"For you," Zevran said, offering Dal his choice of bowls. He stood over the seated mage and glanced back at Oghren. "What were you and our smelly friend talking about so seriously?"

Dal took a bowl and watched Oghren lumber away before he shook his head. "You know Oghren."

"Indeed I do." Zevran's laugh trailed off into silence as he looked down at Dal for a long uncomfortable moment. He finally filled the silence, saying, "I would ask if I can join you, but you always deny me. If I were not so sure that I am irresistible, I might think you were resisting me."

He lingered for a moment despite that before he turned to return to the fireside.

After a moment's hesitation, and a thought about how cold inside one would have to be to feed your people to darkspawn, Dal stopped him with a word. "Zevran."

Zev turned back. "I have asked you to call me Zev. My friends call me Zev."

Dall nodded and patted the empty spot at his side. "Will you join me for dinner, Zev?"


	107. Dragon Fire

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I'm not going to heal any self-inflicted injuries to your backside."

Of the many conversations and arguments that Dal expected to hear when walking through Vigil's Keep, that particular topic was not among them. He paused, just around the corner from the mess hall, shamelessly eavesdropping.

Somehow, hearing Oghren's response to Anders' declaration took some of the shock out of the initial tidbit.

"Aw, come on, I was just showing Sigrun how to do the fire-breathing dragon after a good bean feed."

"Even after I told him not to. _Begged_him not to." Even without seeing her, Dal thought Sigrun sounded decidedly green.

He decided to move on before any more images were planted in his mind. He could face demons, dragons, and darkspawn, but no one should be forced to face Oghren's fire-breathing arse.


	108. I Never Knew You Were an Artist

As murder attempts went, this one was moderately well thought out. Four of them waited for a night strike, dressed in dark clothes, faces smudged with soot or dirt. They hid their weapons until the moment came to attack to avoid a giveaway gleam of moonlight on metal.

They did not want all of the group, only the wardens - the bastard prince and the Circle mage. Without those two as their center, the others would disband.

They lurked outside the circle of firelight, using the forest for cover from the unsleeping eyes of the golem, and attacked together on some silent signal when one of the wardens strayed into the darkness to answer some call of nature. True professionals, they did not play games of threats or negotiation.

Their one failing was that the first blow was not a killing blow.

The initial almost subliminal _whump_ of a mind blast pulled most of the camp out of sleep to wonder if they had heard something or only dreamed it. Doubt fled when blinding light flared in the darkness followed by the screams of men on fire.

From one breath to the next, men and women shook off sleep, grabbed their weapons, and ran, not knowing what waited for them in the night, only that they had so many enemies that identification could wait until they were looting the corpses of the fallen.

Zevran, finding the space next to him empty when he woke, arrived first, in time to be bowled over by a running man in robes who bore him to the ground in time to avoid a explosion of blood and bone that leapt from one attacker to the next in a chain reaction of carnage and death.

Zevran pushed Widald Amell off of him and sat up to see the grim scene illuminated by burning brush and leaves. Above their heads, a rib bone stuck out of a tree trunk, viscera hung from tree limbs like decorations from some dark demon's ball, and every surface the light touched was painted red with blood.

Alistair caught Wynne before she could see, turning away with a sickened murmur of "Maker preserve us" as he led her back to the camp.

Sten took in the destruction with a comment in Qunlat that none of them could decipher. _Saarebas_.

Morrigan nodded. "Twas well done," before she returned to her corner of the camp.

The others left without comment, giving Dal time to heal the wounds he had taken and wring the worst of the blood out of his robe. While he worked, Zevran walked through the bloodied scene, checking bits of corpses for valuables. He looked admiringly at the carnage before turning to Dal with a gleaming smile. "All these months we have traveled together, and I never knew you were an artist."


	109. Us and Them

"They might look like everyone else," the templar trainer told his cadre of fresh recruits, "but they are not."

He paced in front of the line of fresh-faced young men and women and paused to fix each with a steely stare in turn. "They may look like your best friend, your first kiss…"

He paused in front of a black-haired youth who met his eyes with a challenging glare. "Your sister. But they aren't like us."

He waited until the recruit narrowed his eyes at the pointed reference before moving on. "When it comes down to it, always remember, there's us, and there's them."

He stopped at the sound of a muffled snort and turned back to the youth –the Hawke –and said, "The difference is, we've got the Maker on our side. What have they got?"

Only once Carver Hawke dropped his eyes to the ground did he move on again, leading his recruits in what would be only the first of hundreds, even thousands, of recitations of the Chant of Light. His work would be done when his recruits thought of the Chant before they thought for themselves.

Individuality was for dead men.


	110. Ground Rules

"One, don't call me baby, darling, or sweetheart. I'm a grown woman and I can kick your ass."

Anders raised an eyebrow. He happened to like endearments, but Poppy Hawke most assuredly _could_kick his ass.

"Two, I don't cook. You should have figured that out by now, but since you're moving in, I'm just saying that if you want dinner, you'd better get down to the market and do some shopping. You can _ask_Bodahn or Orana to help you, but don't just expect it."

Having heard stories from both Leandra and Bethany, Anders nodded in immediate agreement. Justice begrudged him many pleasures, but even Justice could understand that food poisoning from Poppy's cooking would be counterproductive.

"Three, do _not_give Sandal cardamom. I know you're wondering why. The answer is you don't want to know."

Oh yes he did. How could anyone let "you don't want to know" be the last word on something like that?

"Four, everyone takes a turn walking Wossit. I know you don't like dogs, but he's more than a dog, he's my baby, and you _want_him to like you."

Wanting Wossit to like him was debatable, but Anders definitely did not want the mabari to _dislike_him. He nodded again and crossed his fingers that Poppy was nearly out of rules.

"Five, I love you." Finally her hard stance softened and her stern expression cracked into a smile. "And I love when you call me Sweetheart, Bodahn is a smashing cook, and Wossit adores you."

She lightly punched him in the bicep. "But don't give Sandal cardamom. Trust me."


	111. Think of Me

Found in the private chambers of Messere Garrett Hawke as part of the Chantry investigation:

_My dearest heart,_

_You don't know how many sheets of parchment I went through for this. I tried to say I'm sorry, but it comes with too much equivocation. I tried to explain, but I think that when the time comes, my explanation will be eloquent enough without words._

[I know that you'll hate me. (scribbled out)]

[I know you can't forgive me. (scribbled out)]

_You will probably want to forget me, and I can't blame you, but I hope that you won't. I hope that sometimes, when you feel the joy of your magic and you touch the Fade, you'll think of me._

_I need you to know that I have treasured our time and the gift of love that you gave me, even when I didn't show it. Or showed it poorly. Or showed it in a way you couldn't see._

_You'll doubt this next part, but never do: never doubt that I love you in this life and in any that comes after._

_And if you do what I think you must do, know that I have faith you made the right choice and even that I am grateful._

_-A_

Lacking further clues to the whereabouts of the apostates Hawke and Anders, our search will continue. Rumor has them in Nevarra now.


	112. Old Soldiers Never Die

At the end of his life, Cullen expected little. He had seen too much, done too much. He collected nightmares the way Orlesian ladies collected useless glass figurines, with equal utility and less joy.

He fought in his nightmares like a gladiator in some Tevinter coliseum, fending off temptations of power and pride, lust and ownership. He fought Uldred a thousand times over, or Meredith as she called him to forget that protecting mages was as much a part of his duty as destroying them. More nights than he wanted to admit, he fought Solona Amell out of his bed to wake aching with desire for her.

He fought so hard, for so many years that by the end of his life, he felt that he had left the best parts of himself on battlegrounds in the Fade.

Outside the Fade, he grew old, weakening with age until the templar armor was too heavy for him to wear, his sword too much to wield. In his dreams, he was still as vital as ever, and every night he woke from the dream of life into the reality of dreams with his armor and sword worn as part of him once more.

The last night, he knew as soon as he saw his opponent's face that he had come to the end of his time as a guest in the realm of dreams.

He fought the man in templar armor through the night, their swords ringing as they clashed, the battleground otherwise silent save for their grunts of effort and harsh, panted breaths. What his opponent lacked in experience and patience, he made up for in youth and sheer mad ferocity. The templar fought as though he would never run out of strength while Cullen felt his own endurance ebb until a vicious shield bash threw him to the ground.

He scrabbled for his sword until a boot came down on its hilt to pin it to the ground.

"Go on then," he panted. "Get it over with."

The templar removed his helmet to confront him with a face he remembered all too well. He remembered that man with the close-cropped curly blond hair and mad eyes. His visage had been burned into Cullen's memory after months of seeing it in the mirror every day while he struggled with the aftermath of what had been done to him by Uldred and his minions.

He had prayed with all the fervor in his stained soul never to see that man's face again.

He wrapped his hand around the blade of his sword and jerked, ignoring the pain and fear that he might lose more than just some blood if things went exactly wrong. The other Cullen staggered when his foot was pulled along with the sword hilt, sending him off balance just long enough for Cullen to snatch at his sword with his left hand and drive it up into his opponent from below.

"You didn't win then," he ground out before he shoved harder and gave the blade a twist into the other Cullen's vitals, "and you damned well don't get to win now."

And with all the continuity of dream logic, it was over. He was left lying on his back with his sword thrust up into nothing before it was also just _gone_.

He sensed the movement before he saw the glowing figures step out of the Fade haze around his battleground. There were figures in armor, in robes, other figures that hinted at their existence out of the corner of his eye only to vanish when he looked toward them.

They had names. He knew them, all of them. He knew them as… kindred spirits.

One of the armored figures came to him and offered him a hand to rise from the ground. "Welcome."

Dazed, he took the proffered assistance to stand, feeling knowledge flood him through the contact between his spirit and the one who helped him rise. Somewhere on the other side of the Veil, an old husk was cast off along with a name he no longer needed.

"Welcome, Valor."


	113. I Will Always Find You

Running. When had Anders' life not been framed in the context of running? Who was he running from? Where as he running to? How long would he have to rest before the running began again?

Because make no mistake, it always began again.

After Kirkwall, cast out by the man he had dared to love, he ran to Antiva, thinking to lose himself for a time while he spread his message and manifesto, but the vengeful prince had dogged his heels long before he made it even as far as Rialto.

He had been forced to flee in the night when Sebastian Vael and a squad of templars found the village where he had taken refuge.

From Antiva he stowed away on a ship bound for Llomeryn. He hoped the Rivainis' general disinterest in the Andrastian religion might offer him a chance for respite, even a temporary one.

But apathy toward religion did not translate to apathy toward the gold Sebastian offered for the capture of the apostate Anders. Alive.

The thought of being delivered alive to Sebastian chilled Anders more than the prospect of death ever could.

He fled again, turning his steps toward Tevinter.

The Imperium had not been his first choice, but desperation drove him north and east, away to warmer climes and exotic customs. He could keep running as long as he had to. He would spread the truth where he passed and he would see the world change or he would die.

He believed that until the day he found the first printed sheet nailed to a merchant's travel board in Marothius.

"By order of Sebastian Vael, Prince of Starkhaven…"

He read the standard denunciations – Anders the apostate was a traitor to the Grey Wardens, a murderer, a maleficar, and an abomination. He scoffed at the bad etching that looked little like the man he had been and nothing like him as he had become – thinner, older, with close-cropped hair and a full beard.

And then he stopped – stopped breathing, stopped scoffing, stopped everything to step outside of himself and _weep_.

The last part of the notice was a personal message from Sebastian Vael to him:

_"The Chantry has given me your phylactery. I will always find you."_


	114. Keepsake

Most Circle mages had a few personal items. Usually nothing of any real monetary value – such items "disappeared" from the tower with predictable regularity – but sentimental items, either from their lives before the tower, or from their time in the Circle. Little things – an old toy, a favorite piece of clothing, an unsigned love note.

Wynne was no exception. In her quarters in the tower she kept a sketch that one of her students had made of her in the days when there were only lines on her face when she frowned, a handful of glittering quartz she had picked up on one of her rare trips beyond the tower walls, and a small collection of books on brewing and winemaking.

They are treasures, but she leaves them behind when she leaves the tower to fight at Ostagar, and later when she follows the Warden out into the world.

She carries only one treasure, unique in all the world, keeping it buried at the bottom of her pack. She never takes it out, never pulls the rolled parchment scroll out of its protective tube. She does not need to unroll it to see it any more perfectly than it is fixed in her memory – a name, a date, and a tiny footprint, stamped there with her blood as the ink.

She does not need to see to remember, and remembering is all she needs to rise and fight again and again, even after her body tells her that her time has come. She rises and she presses on, because the next stranger's life she saves might be her son's.


	115. Victory is in the Qun

Poppy did her best to hold herself upright as the Qunari filed past her out of the throne room, out of the keep, and thank the bloody Maker in all his absent glory, out of Kirkwall with that blighted book. She braced herself on one of the great hall's columns, one arm clutched across the horrible wound in her gut, and panted while one grey giant after another passed her, faces set in stoic, disapproving acceptance.

It took everything she had not to slide to the floor, crying for her mother and begging for Anders to come and heal her before her insides turned into outsides and made the floor into some abstract scarlet painting. She would do that soon, but not yet, because the grey giants needed to remember that it was an outsider and a _woman_who was Basilit-an and strong enough to face their Arishok in single combat and be the one standing at the end.

One paused as he passed her, and for a rare moment in her life, she felt small and fragile. He shook his head and said only "Victory is in the Qun."

For all the pain and exhaustion that had narrowed her world to a dark tunnel around the edges, Poppy still managed a laugh. Her guts made her regret it immediately, but it was worth it to see the kossith's eyes widen.

"Right now, big boy, I think victory is in a hot bath. Now shoo, before I get up off this column and taunt you a second time."


	116. Final

After criss-crossing Ferelden; assembling armies; fighting darkspawn, dragons, and every nightmare that saw fit to crawl through the Veil and into their lives, Alistair had somehow conceived the unshakeable certainty that Leah Amell simply could not die. He would die, their friends might die, but she would walk out of the conflagration that threatened their homeland and she would go on to help reunite and rebuild the nation.

She was that exceptional.

What she would not do, he had always believed, was die. He had made that a tenet of faith more real than anything he had ever learned in the Chantry.

He watched the flames lick along the pyre and told himself that he was very angry at her for making him feel stupid one final time.


	117. Once Upon a Time

Mother had always told him stories that began, "Once upon a time…" She had gathered her children close, taking turns holding them in her arms to keep it fair, and she had told them stories of people who had braved the world's judgments for love, or struggled against insurmountable odds for the sake of what was right, or saved whole kingdoms with strength of arm or wits or magic.

No matter the obstacles and the pain her heroes faced in their journeys, they always learned something from their struggles, and they always saved the day. Hawke remembered her stories all his life. They kept him going when they lost Father, because adversity was part of life and growth, as was loss. They kept him going when Carver died, because some childish part of his heart insisted that Carver lived on through Bethany.

And Mother's stories were with him when he followed a trail of blood as he might have followed a trail of bread crumbs through the woods, because right up until the moment when what was left of her rose from Quentin's chair, he was certain that he would save her. Just like in the stories.

Hawke had always been the hero in the stories he told himself to get through the life the Dragon Age had set before him. As his mother's spirit departed, he was forced to entertain the idea that perhaps he wasn't a hero after all.

And if he wasn't the hero, that meant that he could lose everything he loved and gain nothing in return.

"Once upon a time" lost all ability to comfort him after that night.


End file.
